$100 in 1938 is worth $169 in 1949,
because prices increased 68.8% over that period, an average of
4.87% a year.
$100 in 1938 has
the same buying power as
$169
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
68.8%
Average inflation rate
4.87% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$169
Price difference ($100 base)
$68.79
CPI in 1938
14.1
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1938 → 1949
$169
$100 in 1949 → 1938
$59.24
What happened to prices between 1938 and 1949
Between 1938 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 14.1 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 68.8%, which works out to an average of
4.87% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1938 bought what
$0.59 buys in 1949: the 1938 dollar
lost 40.8% of its purchasing power over
these 11 years.
Consumer prices fell 2.1% in 1938, reversing most of 1937’s
gain and interrupting four straight years of recovery from the Depression’s
trough. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the bottom of the
downturn, which had begun that May, to June 1938, a sharp 13-month
contraction that briefly pushed unemployment back up near 19%. Even in a
year the economy was shrinking again, Congress passed one of the New Deal’s
most lasting reforms. The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed June 25 and
effective that October, established the first federal minimum wage, 25
cents an hour, capped the standard workweek at 44 hours with time-and-a-half
overtime beyond it, and restricted the employment of children in most
industries. The wage floor and hours limits applied only to workers engaged
in interstate commerce at first, but they set a precedent that would expand
in the decades that followed. Consumer prices stood 42.4% above their
1913 level and 17.5% below their 1929 peak, evidence of how
far the recovery still had to go even eight years after the Depression
began. First-class postage held at 3 cents.
Every 1938 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 1.69: $1,000 becomes
$1,688, and $10,000 becomes $16,879.
Amount in 1938
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.69
$5.00
$8.44
$10.00
$16.88
$20.00
$33.76
$50.00
$84.40
$100
$169
$500
$844
$1,000
$1,688
$5,000
$8,440
$10,000
$16,879
$100,000
$168,794
$1,000,000
$1,687,943
Inflation by spending category, 1938–1949
Between 1938 and 1949, food rose the most, up 106.6%, while medical care rose the least, up 43.7%, against 68.8% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1938
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1938 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.87%
$169
Food
6.82%
$207
Apparel
5.82%
$186
Transportation
3.84%
$151
Medical care
3.35%
$144
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1938: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1938 to 1949
Prices climbed fastest in the 1940s, averaging 6.07% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.4% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1938–1949 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1938, at end
1938–1940
-0.36%
-0.7%
$99.29
1940–1949
6.07%
70.0%
$169
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1938
$100 from 1938 had already become $123 by
1943, on its way to $169 in 1949; 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 1.4% in 1939, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1938 had the buying
power of $169; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1938 to 1949: $100 is worth $169 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1938 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1949/