$100 in 1930 is worth $83.23 in 1936,
because prices declined 16.8% over that period, an average of
3.01% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$83.23
in 1936
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-16.8%
Average inflation rate
-3.01% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$83.23
Price difference ($100 base)
-$16.77
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 1936
13.9
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 1936
1.46%
$100 in 1930 → 1936
$83.23
$100 in 1936 → 1930
$120
What happened to prices between 1930 and 1936
Between 1930 and 1936, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 13.9.
Cumulatively, prices declined 16.8%, which works out to an average of
-3.01% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$1.20 buys in 1936: the 1930 dollar
gained 20.1% in purchasing power over
these 6 years.
Consumer prices fell 2.3% in 1930, a mild decline compared with what was
coming but the first sign that the summer 1929 downturn was not going to be
short. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates that contraction from
August 1929, and by the time it finally bottomed out in March 1933 it would
run 43 months, the longest of any downturn in the NBER’s chronology back to
1854. Congress made the trade picture worse in June, when President Hoover
signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising duties on more than 20,000
imported goods to some of the highest levels in a century. Trading partners
retaliated with tariffs of their own, and global trade volumes collapsed
over the next several years, deepening a downturn economists still debate
how much the tariff itself worsened. The financial system cracked that fall:
a regional banking panic culminated in the December 11 failure of the Bank
of United States in New York, at the time the largest bank failure in
American history, wiping out more than $200 million in deposits. It was the
first of four banking panics that would hit the country before 1933 was
out. Consumer prices still stood 68.7% above their 1913
starting point, but the direction had clearly turned. First-class postage
held at 2 cents, unchanged for eleven straight years.
Every 1930 amount converts to 1936 at the same ratio, 0.83: $1,000 becomes
$832, and $10,000 becomes $8,323.
Amount in 1930
Value in 1936
$1.00
$0.83
$5.00
$4.16
$10.00
$8.32
$20.00
$16.65
$50.00
$41.62
$100
$83.23
$500
$416
$1,000
$832
$5,000
$4,162
$10,000
$8,323
$100,000
$83,234
$1,000,000
$832,335
Inflation by spending category, 1930–1936
Every category fell between 1930 and 1936: food the most, down 19.2%, and apparel the least, down 13.2%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 1936, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
-3.01%
$83.23
Apparel
-2.34%
$86.78
Food
-3.50%
$80.77
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1930: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $77.84 by
1933, on its way to $83.23 in 1936; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 3.1% in 1934, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1936, prices rose 1.5% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $83.23; the year's average CPI of 13.9 is the level
behind every 1936 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.5% in 1936, a third straight annual increase and part
of a slow, steady climb back from the 1933 trough, though
prices and the broader economy still had not fully recovered to their
pre-Depression levels. Voters delivered their verdict on that recovery in
November, reelecting Franklin D. Roosevelt over Republican Alf Landon in one
of the most lopsided elections in U.S. history: Roosevelt carried 46 of 48
states and won the Electoral College 523 to 8, a broad public endorsement of
the New Deal. Public works kept advancing that year, too. Hoover Dam, one of
the era’s signature projects, had been dedicated in September 1935, but its
first generators did not begin sending electricity over transmission lines
to Los Angeles until October 1936, a milestone that showed how long even a
celebrated project took to reach full operation. Consumer prices ended the
year 40.4% above their 1913 level, still 18.7% below the
1929 peak, a gap that would keep narrowing until a sharp new recession
interrupted the recovery the following year. First-class postage held at 3
cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 1936: $100 is worth $83.23 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1936/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 1936. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-1936/