$100 in 1929 is worth $85.96 in 1941,
because prices declined 14.0% over that period, an average of
1.25% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$85.96
in 1941
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-14.0%
Average inflation rate
-1.25% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$85.96
Price difference ($100 base)
-$14.04
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1941
14.7
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1941
5.00%
$100 in 1929 → 1941
$85.96
$100 in 1941 → 1929
$116
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1941
Between 1929 and 1941, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 14.7.
Cumulatively, prices declined 14.0%, which works out to an average of
-1.25% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$1.16 buys in 1941: the 1929 dollar
gained 16.3% in purchasing power over
these 12 years.
Consumer prices were unchanged in 1929, the CPI’s annual average flat for
the second time in six years and a fitting close to a decade that began with
wartime inflation and ended in rough price stability. By year’s end the
index stood 14.5% below its 1920 peak and roughly 73% above its
1913 starting point, a reminder that even a “stable” decade
left prices well above where they had started. The stability in the cost of
living masked what was building in financial markets. The National Bureau
of Economic Research dates the start of the Great Depression to that
August, the month the business cycle peaked, months before most Americans
noticed anything was wrong. The break came that October: panic selling hit
Wall Street on Black Thursday, October 24, and returned even worse on Black
Tuesday, October 29, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 12% in
a single session. Billions of dollars in paper wealth disappeared within
days, and the crash marked the start of a downturn that would pull consumer
prices into their steepest sustained decline of the 20th century over the
next four years. First-class postage was still 2 cents, a price that would
hold until 1932.
Every 1929 amount converts to 1941 at the same ratio, 0.86: $1,000 becomes
$860, and $10,000 becomes $8,596.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1941
$1.00
$0.86
$5.00
$4.30
$10.00
$8.60
$20.00
$17.19
$50.00
$42.98
$100
$85.96
$500
$430
$1,000
$860
$5,000
$4,298
$10,000
$8,596
$100,000
$85,965
$1,000,000
$859,649
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1941
Every category fell between 1929 and 1941: food the most, down 20.6%, and apparel the least, down 7.7%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1941, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
-1.25%
$85.96
Apparel
-0.66%
$92.31
Food
-1.90%
$79.39
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1929: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1929 to 1941
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 5.00% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1941 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1929, at end
1929–1930
-2.34%
-2.3%
$97.66
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$81.87
1940–1941
5.00%
5.0%
$85.96
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $80.12 by
1935, on its way to $85.96 in 1941; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 5.0% in 1941, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1941, prices rose 5.0% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $85.96; the year's average CPI of 14.7 is the level
behind every 1941 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 5.0% in 1941, up sharply from just 0.7% in
1940 and the fastest annual increase since 1920, as
rearmament and Lend-Lease production pushed demand well ahead of peacetime
supply even before the United States formally joined the war. Congress had
already tilted the country away from neutrality that March, passing the
Lend-Lease Act to arm Britain, and later the Soviet Union and other Allies,
without requiring immediate payment. That April, the government created the
Office of Price Administration to hold down the cost of civilian goods, the
start of a price-control system that would keep official inflation numbers
well below what wartime demand alone would have produced over the next four
years. Then, on December 7, Japan attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor,
destroying much of the Pacific Fleet and killing more than 2,400 Americans.
Congress declared war on Japan the next day and on Germany and Italy three
days later, ending years of debate over whether the United States should
stay out of the conflict spreading across Europe and Asia. Consumer prices,
already up 48.5% from their 1913 level, would climb far
faster over the next two years as the economy converted fully to war
production. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed
at 30 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1941: $100 is worth $85.96 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1941/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1941. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1941/