$100 in 1931 is worth $85.53 in 1933,
because prices declined 14.5% over that period, an average of
7.52% a year.
$100 in 1931 has
the same buying power as
$85.53
in 1933
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
-14.5%
Average inflation rate
-7.52% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$85.53
Price difference ($100 base)
-$14.47
CPI in 1931
15.2
CPI in 1933
13
Inflation in 1931
-8.98%
Inflation in 1933
-5.11%
$100 in 1931 → 1933
$85.53
$100 in 1933 → 1931
$117
What happened to prices between 1931 and 1933
Between 1931 and 1933, the Consumer Price Index went from 15.2 to 13.
Cumulatively, prices declined 14.5%, which works out to an average of
-7.52% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1931 bought what
$1.17 buys in 1933: the 1931 dollar
gained 16.9% in purchasing power over
these 2 years.
Consumer prices fell 9.0% in 1931, a sharp acceleration from the 2.3% decline
in 1930, as falling wages, collapsing farm prices, and a fresh
wave of bank failures fed a downward spiral that the still-contracting
economy could not shake. More than 2,000 banks failed during the year, far
more than in 1930, as depositors who had watched earlier banks go under
pulled their cash out of ones they feared were next. The crisis went
international that September, when Britain suspended the gold standard amid
a run on sterling. The Federal Reserve’s response made the domestic downturn
worse before it made anything better: to defend the dollar’s own gold
backing, the Fed raised its discount rate sharply that October, in two steps
from 1.5% to 3.5%, tightening credit at the exact moment the economy needed
the opposite. Not every headline that year was grim. The Empire State
Building opened its doors on May 1, briefly the tallest building in the
world, though so much of Manhattan’s office space sat vacant amid the
Depression that tenants stayed scarce and New Yorkers took to calling it the
“Empty State Building.” Consumer prices had now fallen for two straight
years and stood 53.5% above their 1913 level, down from the
68.7% margin of just twelve months before. First-class postage remained at 2
cents.
Every 1931 amount converts to 1933 at the same ratio, 0.86: $1,000 becomes
$855, and $10,000 becomes $8,553.
Amount in 1931
Value in 1933
$1.00
$0.86
$5.00
$4.28
$10.00
$8.55
$20.00
$17.11
$50.00
$42.76
$100
$85.53
$500
$428
$1,000
$855
$5,000
$4,276
$10,000
$8,553
$100,000
$85,526
$1,000,000
$855,263
Inflation by spending category, 1931–1933
Every category fell between 1931 and 1933: food the most, down 19.4%, and apparel the least, down 14.5%. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1931
spending costs in 1933, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1931 →
All items (CPI-U)
-7.52%
$85.53
Apparel
-7.56%
$85.45
Food
-10.21%
$80.62
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1931: 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 1931
$100 from 1931 had already become $90.13 by
1932, on its way to $85.53 in 1933; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at -5.1% in 1933, and prices fell 9.9% in 1932, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1933, prices fell 5.1% and $100 from 1931 had the buying
power of $85.53; the year's average CPI of 13 is the level
behind every 1933 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 5.1% in 1933, a smaller decline than 1932’s
but enough to complete a four-year slide of 24.0% from the 1929
peak. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the trough of that
contraction to March 1933, closing out the longest downturn in its
chronology, one that had run 43 months since August 1929. The bottom
arrived alongside a change in government: Franklin D. Roosevelt was
inaugurated March 4 and, within 48 hours, ordered every bank in the country
closed to halt a fresh round of runs. Congress passed the Emergency Banking
Act on March 9, letting solvent banks reopen under federal supervision, and
the panic that had been building for months broke almost immediately. The
administration moved on the currency next: Executive Order 6102, issued
April 5, required Americans to turn in most gold coin, bullion, and
certificates to the Federal Reserve, taking the country off the domestic
gold standard (formal devaluation of the dollar followed the next January).
Congress capped the year’s banking overhaul in June with the Banking Act of
1933, commonly called Glass-Steagall, which created the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation and separated commercial banking from investment
banking. Even after four straight years of falling prices, the CPI still
stood 31.3% above its 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1931 to 1933: $100 is worth $85.53 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1933/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1931 to 1933. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1931-to-1933/