$100 in 1947 is worth $107 in 1949,
because prices increased 6.7% over that period, an average of
3.31% a year.
$100 in 1947 has
the same buying power as
$107
in 1949
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
6.7%
Average inflation rate
3.31% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$107
Price difference ($100 base)
$6.73
CPI in 1947
22.3
CPI in 1949
23.8
Inflation in 1947
14.36%
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
$100 in 1947 → 1949
$107
$100 in 1949 → 1947
$93.70
What happened to prices between 1947 and 1949
Between 1947 and 1949, the Consumer Price Index went from 22.3 to 23.8.
Cumulatively, prices increased 6.7%, which works out to an average of
3.31% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1947 bought what
$0.94 buys in 1949: the 1947 dollar
lost 6.3% of its purchasing power over
these 2 years.
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.
Every 1947 amount converts to 1949 at the same ratio, 1.07: $1,000 becomes
$1,067, and $10,000 becomes $10,673.
Amount in 1947
Value in 1949
$1.00
$1.07
$5.00
$5.34
$10.00
$10.67
$20.00
$21.35
$50.00
$53.36
$100
$107
$500
$534
$1,000
$1,067
$5,000
$5,336
$10,000
$10,673
$100,000
$106,726
$1,000,000
$1,067,265
Inflation by spending category, 1947–1949
Between 1947 and 1949, transportation rose the most, up 19.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 2.3%, against 6.7% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1947
spending costs in 1949, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1947 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.31%
$107
Transportation
9.30%
$119
Medical care
4.70%
$110
Food
1.85%
$104
Apparel
1.12%
$102
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1947: 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 1947
$100 from 1947 had already become $108 by
1948, on its way to $107 in 1949; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 8.1% in 1948, and prices fell 1.2% in 1949, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1949, prices fell 1.2% and $100 from 1947 had the buying
power of $107; 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 1947 to 1949: $100 is worth $107 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-1949/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1947 to 1949. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-1949/