$100 in 1929 is worth $1,585 in 2021,
because prices increased 1484.6% over that period, an average of
3.05% a year.
$100 in 1929 has
the same buying power as
$1,585
in 2021
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1484.6%
Average inflation rate
3.05% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,585
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,485
CPI in 1929
17.1
CPI in 2021
270.97
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
Inflation in 2021
4.70%
$100 in 1929 → 2021
$1,585
$100 in 2021 → 1929
$6.31
What happened to prices between 1929 and 2021
Between 1929 and 2021, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.1 to 270.97.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1484.6%, which works out to an average of
3.05% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1929 bought what
$0.06 buys in 2021: the 1929 dollar
lost 93.7% of its purchasing power over
these 92 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 2021 at the same ratio, 15.85: $1,000 becomes
$15,846, and $10,000 becomes $158,462.
Amount in 1929
Value in 2021
$1.00
$15.85
$5.00
$79.23
$10.00
$158
$20.00
$317
$50.00
$792
$100
$1,585
$500
$7,923
$1,000
$15,846
$5,000
$79,231
$10,000
$158,462
$100,000
$1,584,620
$1,000,000
$15,846,199
Inflation by spending category, 1929–2021
Between 1929 and 2021, food rose the most, up 1583.4%, while apparel rose the least, up 389.9%, against 1484.6% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1929
spending costs in 2021, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1929 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.05%
$1,585
Food
3.12%
$1,683
Apparel
1.74%
$490
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 2021
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 1929–2021 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
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$1,275
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$1,514
2020–2021
4.70%
4.7%
$1,585
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1929
$100 from 1929 had already become $288 by
1974, on its way to $1,585 in 2021; 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: 2021
In 2021, prices rose 4.7% and $100 from 1929 had the buying
power of $1,585; the year's average CPI of 270.97 is the level
behind every 2021 figure on this page.
2021 was the year inflation stopped being background noise. Consumer prices
rose 4.7% on average for the year, and the pace kept building as the months
went on: by December, the 12-month rate had reached 7.0%, the highest since
1982. The proximate cause was a supply chain that could not keep up with a
fast-reopening economy. A global semiconductor shortage choked new car
production and pushed used vehicle prices up by more than a third, the
single largest line item in the year’s inflation math. Lumber, appliances,
and shipping capacity told versions of the same story: demand snapped back
faster than factories, ports, and truckers could handle it. Washington added
fuel in March with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, on top of the
relief already in the pipeline since 2020. For most of the year, the Federal
Reserve called the price surge “transitory,” a temporary reopening effect
expected to fade on its own, and held its policy rate near zero. By
November, with inflation still climbing, the Fed reversed course and began
winding down its bond purchases, the first step toward the rate hikes that
would follow in 2022. Gas averaged $3.01 a gallon for the year, up from
about $2.17 in 2020, while the federal minimum wage held at $7.25,
unchanged since 2009. In hindsight, 2021 reads as the hinge year: the point
where “transitory” inflation became the multi-year fight the Fed spent the
next two years trying to win.
MLA: “Inflation from 1929 to 2021: $100 is worth $1,585 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-2021/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1929 to 2021. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1929-to-2021/