$100 in 1930 is worth $1,550 in 2020,
because prices increased 1449.8% over that period, an average of
3.09% a year.
$100 in 1930 has
the same buying power as
$1,550
in 2020
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1449.8%
Average inflation rate
3.09% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,550
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,450
CPI in 1930
16.7
CPI in 2020
258.811
Inflation in 1930
-2.34%
Inflation in 2020
1.23%
$100 in 1930 → 2020
$1,550
$100 in 2020 → 1930
$6.45
What happened to prices between 1930 and 2020
Between 1930 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.7 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1449.8%, which works out to an average of
3.09% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1930 bought what
$0.06 buys in 2020: the 1930 dollar
lost 93.5% of its purchasing power over
these 90 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 2020 at the same ratio, 15.50: $1,000 becomes
$15,498, and $10,000 becomes $154,977.
Amount in 1930
Value in 2020
$1.00
$15.50
$5.00
$77.49
$10.00
$155
$20.00
$310
$50.00
$775
$100
$1,550
$500
$7,749
$1,000
$15,498
$5,000
$77,488
$10,000
$154,977
$100,000
$1,549,766
$1,000,000
$15,497,665
Inflation by spending category, 1930–2020
Between 1930 and 2020, food rose the most, up 1612.9%, while apparel rose the least, up 387.9%, against 1449.8% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1930
spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1930 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.09%
$1,550
Food
3.21%
$1,713
Apparel
1.78%
$488
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–).
Decade by decade: 1930 to 2020
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and fell in the 1930s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1930–2020 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1930, at end
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$83.83
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$144
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$177
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$232
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$493
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$783
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$1,031
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$1,306
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$1,550
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1930
$100 from 1930 had already become $322 by
1975, on its way to $1,550 in 2020; 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: 2020
In 2020, prices rose 1.2% and $100 from 1930 had the buying
power of $1,550; the year's average CPI of 258.811 is the level
behind every 2020 figure on this page.
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1930 to 2020: $100 is worth $1,550 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1930 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1930-to-2020/