$100 in 1943 is worth $113 in 1946,
because prices increased 12.7% over that period, an average of
4.07% a year.
$100 in 1943 has
the same buying power as
$113
in 1946
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
12.7%
Average inflation rate
4.07% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$113
Price difference ($100 base)
$12.72
CPI in 1943
17.3
CPI in 1946
19.5
Inflation in 1943
6.13%
Inflation in 1946
8.33%
$100 in 1943 → 1946
$113
$100 in 1946 → 1943
$88.72
What happened to prices between 1943 and 1946
Between 1943 and 1946, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 19.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 12.7%, which works out to an average of
4.07% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1943 bought what
$0.89 buys in 1946: the 1943 dollar
lost 11.3% of its purchasing power over
these 3 years.
Consumer prices rose 6.1% in 1943, a slower pace than 1942’s
surge but still well above anything the country had seen before the war.
The slowdown owed largely to the “Hold the Line” order, issued that April,
which froze most wages, prices, and rents at their current levels after the
previous year’s jump showed how far demand had outrun the existing
controls. Rationing grew more sophisticated alongside the freeze: starting
in February, a points system split scarce goods into red points for meat,
butter, and other fats and blue points for canned and processed foods,
letting households budget across categories instead of simply going without
once a flat quota ran dry. The government also changed how it collected the
taxes paying for all of it. The Current Tax Payment Act, signed June 9,
required employers to withhold federal income tax directly from paychecks
for the first time, smoothing the flow of wartime revenue and creating the
pay-as-you-go system still used today. Consumer prices stood 74.7% above
their 1913 level and 33.1% above 1933’s
Depression-era low. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum
wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.
Every 1943 amount converts to 1946 at the same ratio, 1.13: $1,000 becomes
$1,127, and $10,000 becomes $11,272.
Amount in 1943
Value in 1946
$1.00
$1.13
$5.00
$5.64
$10.00
$11.27
$20.00
$22.54
$50.00
$56.36
$100
$113
$500
$564
$1,000
$1,127
$5,000
$5,636
$10,000
$11,272
$100,000
$112,717
$1,000,000
$1,127,168
Inflation by spending category, 1943–1946
Between 1943 and 1946, apparel rose the most, up 23.7%, while transportation rose the least, up 5.0%, against 12.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1943
spending costs in 1946, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1943 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.07%
$113
Apparel
7.36%
$124
Food
5.01%
$116
Medical care
3.73%
$112
Transportation
1.65%
$105
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1943: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1943
$100 from 1943 had already become $102 by
1944, on its way to $113 in 1946; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 8.3% in 1946, and the smallest rise was 1.7% in 1944.
In 1946, prices rose 8.3% and $100 from 1943 had the buying
power of $113; the year's average CPI of 19.5 is the level
behind every 1946 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 8.3% in 1946, up sharply from 1945’s
2.3% and the sharpest increase since 1942, as wartime price controls
finally came apart. Congress let the Office of Price Administration’s
authority lapse at the end of June, reinstated a weaker version soon after,
then wound the whole system down through the rest of the year, releasing
years of pent-up demand into the price level almost at once. Meat was the
clearest casualty of the fight over decontrol: farmers withheld livestock
rather than sell at capped prices, producing severe shortages that spring
and summer until ceilings on meat were lifted that October, after which
supplies reappeared almost overnight. Labor cashed in its own wartime
restraint the same year. An estimated 4.6 million workers walked out at
some point in 1946, hitting steel, coal, automakers, and the railroads in
the largest strike wave in U.S. history, as unions pushed for wage gains to
offset cost-of-living increases controls could no longer contain. Amid the
turmoil, Congress made a less visible but lasting change to economic
policy: the Employment Act of 1946, signed that February, committed the
federal government to promoting maximum employment and created the Council
of Economic Advisers. Consumer prices stood 97.0% above their
1913 level, nearly double where the index had started 33
years earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage
stayed at 40 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1943 to 1946: $100 is worth $113 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1946/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1943 to 1946. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1946/