$100 in 1938 is worth $1,025 in 1993,
because prices increased 924.8% over that period, an average of
4.32% a year.
$100 in 1938 has
the same buying power as
$1,025
in 1993
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
924.8%
Average inflation rate
4.32% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,025
Price difference ($100 base)
$925
CPI in 1938
14.1
CPI in 1993
144.5
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
Inflation in 1993
2.99%
$100 in 1938 → 1993
$1,025
$100 in 1993 → 1938
$9.76
What happened to prices between 1938 and 1993
Between 1938 and 1993, the Consumer Price Index went from 14.1 to 144.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 924.8%, which works out to an average of
4.32% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1938 bought what
$0.10 buys in 1993: the 1938 dollar
lost 90.2% of its purchasing power over
these 55 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 1993 at the same ratio, 10.25: $1,000 becomes
$10,248, and $10,000 becomes $102,482.
Amount in 1938
Value in 1993
$1.00
$10.25
$5.00
$51.24
$10.00
$102
$20.00
$205
$50.00
$512
$100
$1,025
$500
$5,124
$1,000
$10,248
$5,000
$51,241
$10,000
$102,482
$100,000
$1,024,823
$1,000,000
$10,248,227
Inflation by spending category, 1938–1993
Between 1938 and 1993, medical care rose the most, up 1855.3%, while apparel rose the least, up 510.5%, against 924.8% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1938
spending costs in 1993, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1938 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.32%
$1,025
Medical care
5.55%
$1,955
Food
4.56%
$1,164
Transportation
4.06%
$893
Apparel
3.34%
$611
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 1993
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 1938–1993 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
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$927
1990–1993
3.40%
10.6%
$1,025
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1938
$100 from 1938 had already become $230 by
1966, on its way to $1,025 in 1993; 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: 1993
In 1993, prices rose 3.0% and $100 from 1938 had the buying
power of $1,025; the year's average CPI of 144.5 is the level
behind every 1993 figure on this page.
By 1993, the median household earned about $31,200, gas averaged $1.11 a gallon, and a new home
cost roughly $126,500. Inflation ran at 3.0% for the year, holding close to where it had settled
the year before as the recovery slowly gathered strength. Washington spent much of the year on
two pieces of unfinished business from the recession: a deficit-reduction package, the Omnibus
Budget Reconciliation Act, that raised the top income tax rate to 39.6% to start narrowing a
budget gap left over from the 1980s, and a trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement,
that President Clinton signed into law in December after a contentious fight in Congress. NAFTA
phased out most tariffs between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada and took effect the following
January. The year’s other defining event had nothing to do with the economy: in February, a bomb
exploded in the World Trade Center’s parking garage, killing six people and injuring more than a
thousand. By year’s end, the pieces of the decade’s later economic story, freer trade, a
shrinking deficit, and inflation holding near 3%, were already in place.
MLA: “Inflation from 1938 to 1993: $100 is worth $1,025 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1993/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1938 to 1993. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-1993/