Between 1947 and 2022, the Consumer Price Index went from 22.3 to 292.655.
Cumulatively, prices increased 1212.4%, which works out to an average of
3.49% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1947 bought what
$0.08 buys in 2022.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1947 spending costs in 2022, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1947 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.49%
$1,312
Medical care
5.06%
$4,049
Transportation
3.62%
$1,440
Food
3.44%
$1,267
Apparel
1.56%
$318
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–).
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 1947 to 2022: $100 is worth $1,312 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-2022/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1947 to 2022. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1947-to-2022/