$100 in 1938 is worth $1,836 in 2020,
because prices increased 1735.5% over that period, an average of
3.61% a year.
$100 in 1938 has
the same buying power as
$1,836
in 2020
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
1735.5%
Average inflation rate
3.61% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,836
Price difference ($100 base)
$1,736
CPI in 1938
14.1
CPI in 2020
258.811
Inflation in 1938
-2.08%
Inflation in 2020
1.23%
$100 in 1938 → 2020
$1,836
$100 in 2020 → 1938
$5.45
What happened to prices between 1938 and 2020
Between 1938 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 14.1 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1735.5%, which works out to an average of
3.61% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1938 bought what
$0.05 buys in 2020: the 1938 dollar
lost 94.6% of its purchasing power over
these 82 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 2020 at the same ratio, 18.36: $1,000 becomes
$18,355, and $10,000 becomes $183,554.
Amount in 1938
Value in 2020
$1.00
$18.36
$5.00
$91.78
$10.00
$184
$20.00
$367
$50.00
$918
$100
$1,836
$500
$9,178
$1,000
$18,355
$5,000
$91,777
$10,000
$183,554
$100,000
$1,835,539
$1,000,000
$18,355,390
Inflation by spending category, 1938–2020
Between 1938 and 2020, medical care rose the most, up 4937.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 439.2%, against 1735.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1938
spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1938 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.61%
$1,836
Medical care
4.90%
$5,038
Food
3.85%
$2,208
Transportation
3.25%
$1,379
Apparel
2.08%
$539
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 2020
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 1938–2020 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
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$1,221
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$1,546
2010–2020
1.73%
18.7%
$1,836
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1938
$100 from 1938 had already become $462 by
1978, on its way to $1,836 in 2020; 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 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2020
In 2020, prices rose 1.2% and $100 from 1938 had the buying
power of $1,836; the year's average CPI of 258.811 is the level
behind every 2020 figure on this page.
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1938 to 2020: $100 is worth $1,836 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1938 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1938-to-2020/