Value of $100 in 1940, adjusted to 2026

What happened to prices between 1940 and 2026

Between 1940 and 2026, the Consumer Price Index went from 14 to 332.243. Cumulatively, prices increased 2273.2%, which works out to an average of 3.75% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1940 bought what $0.04 buys in 2026: the 1940 dollar lost 95.8% of its purchasing power over these 86 years.

Consumer prices rose 0.7% in 1940, snapping 1939’s decline and marking the first increase since 1937. The gain was modest, and the CPI still stood 18.1% below its 1929 peak, a reminder of how far the recovery from the Depression’s trough had left to go even as defense orders from Britain and France began reaching American factories. War was already reshaping domestic policy well before it touched American soil. Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act that September, the country’s first peacetime draft, requiring men aged 21 to 35 to register and authorizing the induction of up to 900,000 men a year, more than a year before Pearl Harbor. That November, Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term, defeating Republican Wendell Willkie after campaigning on keeping the United States out of the war then consuming Europe and Asia. The promise would not hold much longer: within two years, wartime demand would push consumer prices up faster than at any point since the aftermath of World War I. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the federal minimum wage stayed at 30 cents an hour, the level set the previous October under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

More about inflation in 1940 →

The destination year: 2026

In 2026, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1940 had the buying power of $2,373; the year's average CPI of 332.243 is the level behind every 2026 figure on this page.