$100 in 1938 is worth $684 in 1982,
because prices increased 584.4% over that period, an average of
4.47% a year.
$100 in 1938 has
the same buying power as
$684
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
584.4%
Average inflation rate
4.47% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$684
Price difference ($100 base)
$584
CPI in 1938
14.1
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1938 → 1982
$684
$100 in 1982 → 1938
$14.61
What happened to prices between 1938 and 1982
Between 1938 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 14.1 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 584.4%, which works out to an average of
4.47% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1938 bought what
$0.15 buys in 1982: the 1938 dollar
lost 85.4% of its purchasing power over
these 44 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 1982 at the same ratio, 6.84: $1,000 becomes
$6,844, and $10,000 becomes $68,440.
Amount in 1938
Value in 1982
$1.00
$6.84
$5.00
$34.22
$10.00
$68.44
$20.00
$137
$50.00
$342
$100
$684
$500
$3,422
$1,000
$6,844
$5,000
$34,220
$10,000
$68,440
$100,000
$684,397
$1,000,000
$6,843,972
Inflation by spending category, 1938–1982
Between 1938 and 1982, medical care rose the most, up 798.1%, while apparel rose the least, up 346.6%, against 584.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1938
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1938 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.47%
$684
Medical care
5.12%
$898
Food
4.85%
$805
Transportation
4.40%
$664
Apparel
3.46%
$447
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 1982
Prices climbed fastest in the 1980s, averaging 8.22% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.4% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1938–1982 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1938, at end
1938–1940
-0.36%
-0.7%
$99.29
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$171
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$210
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$275
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$584
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$684
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1938
$100 from 1938 had already become $210 by
1960, on its way to $684 in 1982; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1982
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1938 had the buying
power of $684; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1938 to 1982: $100 is worth $684 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1938 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1982/