$100 in 1929 is worth $101 in 1943,
because prices increased 1.2% over that period, an average of
0.08% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$101
in 1943
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1.2%
Average inflation rate
0.08% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$101
Price difference ($100 base)
$1.17
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 1943
17.3
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 1943
6.13%
$100 in 1929 → 1943
$101
$100 in 1943 → 1929
$98.84
What happened to prices between 1929 and 1943
Between 1929 and 1943, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 17.3.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1.2%, which works out to an average of
0.08% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.99 buys in 1943: the 1929 dollar
lost 1.2% of its purchasing power over
these 14 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 1943 at the same ratio, 1.01: $1,000 becomes
$1,012, and $10,000 becomes $10,117.
Amount in 1929
Value in 1943
$1.00
$1.01
$5.00
$5.06
$10.00
$10.12
$20.00
$20.23
$50.00
$50.58
$100
$101
$500
$506
$1,000
$1,012
$5,000
$5,058
$10,000
$10,117
$100,000
$101,170
$1,000,000
$1,011,696
Inflation by spending category, 1929–1943
Between 1929 and 1943, apparel rose the most, up 12.6%, while food rose the least, up 3.6%, against 1.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 1943, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
0.08%
$101
Apparel
0.85%
$113
Food
0.26%
$104
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 1943
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 7.31% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–1943 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
1940–1943
7.31%
23.6%
$101
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $81.29 by
1936, on its way to $101 in 1943; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 10.9% in 1942, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1943, prices rose 6.1% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $101; the year's average CPI of 17.3 is the level
behind every 1943 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 6.1% in 1943, a slower pace than 1942’s
surge but still well above anything the country had seen before the war.
The slowdown owed largely to the “Hold the Line” order, issued that April,
which froze most wages, prices, and rents at their current levels after the
previous year’s jump showed how far demand had outrun the existing
controls. Rationing grew more sophisticated alongside the freeze: starting
in February, a points system split scarce goods into red points for meat,
butter, and other fats and blue points for canned and processed foods,
letting households budget across categories instead of simply going without
once a flat quota ran dry. The government also changed how it collected the
taxes paying for all of it. The Current Tax Payment Act, signed June 9,
required employers to withhold federal income tax directly from paychecks
for the first time, smoothing the flow of wartime revenue and creating the
pay-as-you-go system still used today. Consumer prices stood 74.7% above
their 1913 level and 33.1% above 1933’s
Depression-era low. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum
wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 1943: $100 is worth $101 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1943/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 1943. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-1943/