$100 in 1949 is worth $1,074 in 2019,
because prices increased 974.2% over that period, an average of
3.45% a year.
$100 in 1949 has
the same buying power as
$1,074
in 2019
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
974.2%
Average inflation rate
3.45% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$1,074
Price difference ($100 base)
$974
CPI in 1949
23.8
CPI in 2019
255.657
Inflation in 1949
-1.24%
Inflation in 2019
1.81%
$100 in 1949 → 2019
$1,074
$100 in 2019 → 1949
$9.31
What happened to prices between 1949 and 2019
Between 1949 and 2019, the Consumer Price Index went from 23.8 to 255.657.
Cumulatively, prices increased 974.2%, which works out to an average of
3.45% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1949 bought what
$0.09 buys in 2019: the 1949 dollar
lost 90.7% of its purchasing power over
these 70 years.
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.
Every 1949 amount converts to 2019 at the same ratio, 10.74: $1,000 becomes
$10,742, and $10,000 becomes $107,419.
Amount in 1949
Value in 2019
$1.00
$10.74
$5.00
$53.71
$10.00
$107
$20.00
$215
$50.00
$537
$100
$1,074
$500
$5,371
$1,000
$10,742
$5,000
$53,709
$10,000
$107,419
$100,000
$1,074,189
$1,000,000
$10,741,891
Inflation by spending category, 1949–2019
Between 1949 and 2019, medical care rose the most, up 3267.7%, while apparel rose the least, up 204.0%, against 974.2% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1949
spending costs in 2019, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1949 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.45%
$1,074
Medical care
5.15%
$3,368
Food
3.39%
$1,033
Transportation
3.27%
$951
Apparel
1.60%
$304
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1949: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1949 to 2019
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 7.82% a year, and slowest in the 1940s (1.26% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1949–2019 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1949, at end
1949–1950
1.26%
1.3%
$101
1950–1960
2.08%
22.8%
$124
1960–1970
2.74%
31.1%
$163
1970–1980
7.82%
112.4%
$346
1980–1990
4.72%
58.6%
$549
1990–2000
2.80%
31.8%
$724
2000–2010
2.39%
26.6%
$916
2010–2019
1.78%
17.2%
$1,074
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1949
$100 from 1949 had already become $437 by
1984, on its way to $1,074 in 2019; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1980, and prices fell 0.4% in 1955, the deepest deflation of the period.
Long periods are sampled every 5 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 2019
In 2019, prices rose 1.8% and $100 from 1949 had the buying
power of $1,074; the year's average CPI of 255.657 is the level
behind every 2019 figure on this page.
2019 was the last ordinary year before COVID-19. Consumer prices rose 1.8%,
slightly under the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, with gasoline averaging
$2.60 a gallon. Median household income jumped to $68,703, the highest on
record up to that point, and the median new home sold for about $328,000. A
first-class stamp rose to 55 cents.
The Fed reversed course. After four increases in 2018, it cut rates three
times, to 1.50–1.75%, citing slower global growth, trade tensions, and low
inflation. In July the expansion that began in June 2009 became the longest in
U.S. records, and in August the yield curve briefly inverted, a signal
investors read as a recession warning.
For workers at the bottom of the pay scale, 2019 marked a milestone of a
different kind. The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25 and reached its tenth
year without an increase, the longest gap since the wage was first set. Because
prices had climbed about 19% since it was last raised in 2009, its buying power
was lower than at any point in that span.
MLA: “Inflation from 1949 to 2019: $100 is worth $1,074 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2019/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1949 to 2019. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1949-to-2019/