Between 1946 and 2022, the Consumer Price Index went from 19.5 to 292.655.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1400.8%, which works out to an average of
3.63% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1946 bought what
$0.07 buys in 2022.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1946 spending costs in 2022, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1946 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.63%
$1,501
Medical care
5.10%
$4,372
Transportation
3.71%
$1,595
Food
3.67%
$1,542
Apparel
1.73%
$369
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–).
Long periods are sampled every 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2022
2022 was the year inflation returned. Consumer prices rose 8.0% on average,
the worst since 1981, driven by pandemic-era supply chains, stimulus-fueled
demand, and an energy shock from the war in Ukraine. Gas briefly topped $5 a
gallon nationally for the first time ever, and “inflation” became the
top-ranked economic concern in nearly every poll of American households.
MLA: “Inflation from 1946 to 2022: $100 is worth $1,501 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-2022/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1946 to 2022. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1946-to-2022/