Between 1958 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 28.9 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 795.5%, which works out to an average of
3.60% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1958 bought what
$0.11 buys in 2020.
Consumer prices rose 2.8% in 1958, down only slightly from
1957’s 3.3% even as the country sank into the sharpest
postwar recession to that point, an early sign that inflation and a
shrinking economy could coexist rather than trade off against each other.
The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the downturn’s trough to
that April, with unemployment peaking near 7.5% that summer, the worst
reading since the 1930s. The Post Office raised first-class postage to 4
cents that August 1, up from 3 cents, the rate’s first change since 1932.
Washington answered the Soviet Union’s technological lead that summer
too: Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29,
establishing NASA, which opened for business that October 1 to compete
with the Soviet space program after the shock of Sputnik the year before.
Consumer prices finished 1958 191.9% above their 1913
level. The minimum wage held at $1.00 an hour, and first-class postage
rose to 4 cents that August, the first increase since 1932.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1958 spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1958 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.60%
$896
Medical care
5.34%
$2,519
Energy
3.64%
$916
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.62%
$904
Food
3.58%
$885
Transportation
3.20%
$704
Apparel
1.58%
$265
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1958: 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: 2020
2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the
inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the
year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads,
closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on
April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first
negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one
wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about
$1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for
the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and
meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than
usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite
directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed
March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week
to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures.
The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves
that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the
amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment
beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the
stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would
build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1958 to 2020: $100 is worth $896 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1958-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1958 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1958-to-2020/