$100 in 1938 is worth $879 in 1989,
because prices increased 779.4% over that period, an average of
4.36% a year.
$100 in 1938 has
the same buying power as
$879
in 1989
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
779.4%
Average inflation rate
4.36% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$879
Price difference ($100 base)
$779
CPI in 1938
14.1
CPI in 1989
124
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
Inflation in 1989
4.82%
$100 in 1938 → 1989
$879
$100 in 1989 → 1938
$11.37
What happened to prices between 1938 and 1989
Between 1938 and 1989, the Consumer Price Index went from 14.1 to 124.
Cumulatively, prices increased 779.4%, which works out to an average of
4.36% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1938 bought what
$0.11 buys in 1989: the 1938 dollar
lost 88.6% of its purchasing power over
these 51 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 1989 at the same ratio, 8.79: $1,000 becomes
$8,794, and $10,000 becomes $87,943.
Amount in 1938
Value in 1989
$1.00
$8.79
$5.00
$43.97
$10.00
$87.94
$20.00
$176
$50.00
$440
$100
$879
$500
$4,397
$1,000
$8,794
$5,000
$43,972
$10,000
$87,943
$100,000
$879,433
$1,000,000
$8,794,326
Inflation by spending category, 1938–1989
Between 1938 and 1989, medical care rose the most, up 1349.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 441.6%, against 779.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1938
spending costs in 1989, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1938 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.36%
$879
Medical care
5.38%
$1,450
Food
4.69%
$1,034
Transportation
4.11%
$782
Apparel
3.37%
$542
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 1989
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and fell in the 1930s (0.4% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1938–1989 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
1980–1989
4.65%
50.5%
$879
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1938
$100 from 1938 had already become $220 by
1964, on its way to $879 in 1989; 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: 1989
In 1989, prices rose 4.8% and $100 from 1938 had the buying
power of $879; the year's average CPI of 124 is the level
behind every 1989 figure on this page.
1989 closed out a decade that began in economic crisis and ended in a long,
calmer expansion. Inflation for the year came in at 4.8%, higher than the
mid-decade lull but still roughly a third of the 13.5% peak that had opened
the decade in 1980. The federal minimum wage, unchanged at $3.35 an hour
since January 1981, had gone longer without an increase than at any point
since Congress created it, and had lost close to a third of its purchasing
power to inflation in the meantime; lawmakers would finally raise it to
$3.80 the following April. The decade’s other unfinished business came due
in August, when Congress passed FIRREA, the law that created the Resolution
Trust Corporation to seize and sell off the hundreds of savings and loan
institutions that a decade of deregulation and risky lending had left
insolvent, a bailout that eventually cost taxpayers over $100 billion. On
Wall Street, the recovery was already complete: the Dow Jones Industrial
Average closed 1989 at a record high, just over two years after Black
Monday’s 22.6% single-day crash, capping the bull market that had begun at
the Dow’s 776 low in August 1982. Between the S&L bailout, a wage floor
eroded by years without a raise, and a stock market at new highs, 1989
captured how unevenly the decade’s disinflation had been felt.
MLA: “Inflation from 1938 to 1989: $100 is worth $879 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1989/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1938 to 1989. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1989/