$100 in 1929 is worth $1,255 in 2009,
because prices increased 1154.6% over that period, an average of
3.21% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$1,255
in 2009
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1154.6%
Average inflation rate
3.21% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,255
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,155
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 2009
214.537
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 2009
-0.36%
$100 in 1929 → 2009
$1,255
$100 in 2009 → 1929
$7.97
What happened to prices between 1929 and 2009
Between 1929 and 2009, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 214.537.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1154.6%, which works out to an average of
3.21% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.08 buys in 2009: the 1929 dollar
lost 92.0% of its purchasing power over
these 80 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 2009 at the same ratio, 12.55: $1,000 becomes
$12,546, and $10,000 becomes $125,460.
Amount in 1929
Value in 2009
$1.00
$12.55
$5.00
$62.73
$10.00
$125
$20.00
$251
$50.00
$627
$100
$1,255
$500
$6,273
$1,000
$12,546
$5,000
$62,730
$10,000
$125,460
$100,000
$1,254,602
$1,000,000
$12,546,023
Inflation by spending category, 1929–2009
Between 1929 and 2009, food rose the most, up 1220.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 386.1%, against 1154.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 2009, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.21%
$1,255
Food
3.28%
$1,321
Apparel
2.00%
$486
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 2009
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and fell in the 1920s (2.3% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1929–2009 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
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$141
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$173
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$227
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$482
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$764
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$1,007
2000–2009
2.47%
24.6%
$1,255
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $215 by
1969, on its way to $1,255 in 2009; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 14.4% in 1947, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2009
In 2009, prices fell 0.4% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $1,255; the year's average CPI of 214.537 is the level
behind every 2009 figure on this page.
2009 is the rarest kind of year in the modern price data: one where the cost
of living went down. The CPI fell 0.4%, the first full-year deflation
since 1955, as the Great Recession hollowed out demand and oil unwound from
its $147 spike the summer before. Gasoline that had cost over $4 a gallon in
July 2008 averaged $2.35 in 2009, and that energy collapse dragged the
12-month inflation rate to −2.1% by July, the deepest reading since 1950.
Policymakers treated falling prices not as relief but as a warning: deflation
raises the real weight of debt precisely when households are drowning in it,
which is why the Federal Reserve pinned interest rates near zero, began buying
bonds by the hundreds of billions, and Washington passed a $787 billion
stimulus. The medicine took: prices stabilized within a year, and 2009 remains
the textbook case of why central banks fear deflation more than moderate
inflation.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 2009: $100 is worth $1,255 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-2009/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 2009. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-2009/