$100 in 1943 is worth $129 in 1947,
because prices increased 28.9% over that period, an average of
6.55% a year.
$100 in 1943 has
the same buying power as
$129
in 1947
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
28.9%
Average inflation rate
6.55% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$129
Price difference ($100 base)
$28.90
CPI in 1943
17.3
CPI in 1947
22.3
Inflation in 1943
6.13%
Inflation in 1947
14.36%
$100 in 1943 → 1947
$129
$100 in 1947 → 1943
$77.58
What happened to prices between 1943 and 1947
Between 1943 and 1947, the Consumer Price Index went from 17.3 to 22.3.
Cumulatively, prices increased 28.9%, which works out to an average of
6.55% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1943 bought what
$0.78 buys in 1947: the 1943 dollar
lost 22.4% of its purchasing power over
these 4 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 1947 at the same ratio, 1.29: $1,000 becomes
$1,289, and $10,000 becomes $12,890.
Amount in 1943
Value in 1947
$1.00
$1.29
$5.00
$6.45
$10.00
$12.89
$20.00
$25.78
$50.00
$64.45
$100
$129
$500
$645
$1,000
$1,289
$5,000
$6,445
$10,000
$12,890
$100,000
$128,902
$1,000,000
$1,289,017
Inflation by spending category, 1943–1947
Between 1943 and 1947, apparel rose the most, up 43.5%, while transportation rose the least, up 16.4%, against 28.9% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1943
spending costs in 1947, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1943 →
All items (CPI-U)
6.55%
$129
Apparel
9.45%
$144
Food
8.96%
$141
Medical care
4.78%
$121
Transportation
3.86%
$116
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 $104 by
1945, on its way to $129 in 1947; 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 the smallest rise was 1.7% in 1944.
In 1947, prices rose 14.4% and $100 from 1943 had the buying
power of $129; the year's average CPI of 22.3 is the level
behind every 1947 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 14.4% in 1947, up from 1946’s 8.3% and
the fastest annual increase since 1920, as the last of the wartime price
controls disappeared and a year of strikes, wage catch-up, and lingering
shortages hit consumers all at once. Congress answered the previous year’s
strike wave that June, overriding President Truman’s veto to pass the
Taft-Hartley Act, which banned secondary boycotts and the closed shop and
let states adopt “right-to-work” laws curbing union power. American
attention was also turning outward. In a June 5 speech at Harvard,
Secretary of State George Marshall outlined a U.S.-funded plan to rebuild
Western Europe’s economies, an effort that would become known as the
Marshall Plan once Congress funded it the following year. The government
reorganized itself for the confrontation with the Soviet Union that plan was
partly designed to prevent: the National Security Act, signed July 26,
created the Department of Defense, the Air Force as a separate service, the
Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. Consumer
prices stood 125.3% above their 1913 level and 30.4% above
1929’s pre-Depression peak, up from just 1.2% above it four
years earlier. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage
stayed at 40 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1943 to 1947: $100 is worth $129 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1947/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1943 to 1947. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1943-to-1947/