$100 in 1946 is worth $122 in 1949,
because prices increased 22.1% over that period, an average of
6.87% a year.
$100 in 1946 has
the same buying power as
$122
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
22.1%
Average inflation rate
6.87% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$122
Price difference ($100 base)
$22.05
CPI in 1946
19.5
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1946
8.33%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1946 → 1949
$122
$100 in 1949 → 1946
$81.93
What happened to prices between 1946 and 1949
Between 1946 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 19.5 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 22.1%, which works out to an average of
6.87% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1946 bought what
$0.82 buys in 1949: the 1946 dollar
lost 18.1% of its purchasing power over
these 3 years.
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.
Every 1946 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 1.22: $1,000 becomes
$1,221, and $10,000 becomes $12,205.
Amount in 1946
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.22
$5.00
$6.10
$10.00
$12.21
$20.00
$24.41
$50.00
$61.03
$100
$122
$500
$610
$1,000
$1,221
$5,000
$6,103
$10,000
$12,205
$100,000
$122,051
$1,000,000
$1,220,513
Inflation by spending category, 1946–1949
Between 1946 and 1949, transportation rose the most, up 32.3%, while medical care rose the least, up 18.4%, against 22.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1946
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1946 →
All items (CPI-U)
6.87%
$122
Transportation
9.79%
$132
Food
8.08%
$126
Apparel
5.85%
$119
Medical care
5.79%
$118
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1946: 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 1946
$100 from 1946 had already become $114 by
1947, on its way to $122 in 1949; 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 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1946 had the buying
power of $122; the year's average CPI of 23.8 is the level
behind every 1949 figure on this page.
Consumer prices fell 1.2% in 1949, down from 1948’s 8.1%
gain and the first annual decline since 1939, the first real break in a
decade otherwise defined by wartime and postwar inflation. A mild recession
drove the drop: the National Bureau of Economic Research dates a downturn
from November 1948 to October 1949, as businesses worked off inventories
built up during the postwar buying boom and price pressure finally eased.
The Cold War hardened around the same time. On April 4, the United States,
Canada, and ten Western European nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty,
committing to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all and
formalizing the Western alliance against Soviet expansion. That August 29,
the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American nuclear
monopoly just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and setting off an
arms race that would run for decades. Congress closed out the decade’s wage
policy that October, passing the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1949 to
raise the federal minimum wage to 75 cents an hour effective the following
January, nearly double the 40 cents that had held since 1945. The decade
closed with consumer prices 140.4% above their 1913 level,
up 70% since 1940 alone even after 1949’s decline.
First-class postage held at 3 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1946 to 1949: $100 is worth $122 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1946 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-1949/