Between 1962 and 2022, the Consumer Price Index went from 30.2 to 292.655.
Cumulatively, prices increased 869.1%, which works out to an average of
3.86% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1962 bought what
$0.10 buys in 2022.
Consumer prices rose 1.0% in 1962, matching 1961’s pace as
inflation stayed remarkably low and unemployment slowly declined from its
recession-era highs. That January, Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers
introduced “wage-price guideposts,” non-binding targets meant to keep pay
and price increases in line with productivity growth without formal
controls. The space race delivered a milestone that February, when John
Glenn’s Friendship 7 capsule circled Earth three times, making him the
first American to orbit the planet. Markets got a scare that spring: a
dispute over U.S. Steel’s April price increase, which Kennedy publicly
pressured the company into rolling back, rattled investors, and the Dow
Jones Industrial Average fell about 5.7% on May 28, its steepest one-day
drop since the 1929 crash. The year’s gravest moment came that October,
when American reconnaissance photographed Soviet nuclear missiles in
Cuba, setting off a 13-day standoff that brought the two superpowers
closer to nuclear war than at any other point in the Cold War before the
Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge
not to invade the island. Consumer prices finished 1962 205.1% above their
1913 level. First-class postage held at 4 cents, and the
minimum wage stayed at $1.15 an hour.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1962 spending costs in 2022, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1962 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.86%
$969
Medical care
5.38%
$2,326
Energy
4.39%
$1,320
Food
3.91%
$998
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.80%
$937
Transportation
3.66%
$865
Apparel
1.70%
$274
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1962: housing (1967–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Long periods are sampled every 2 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 1962 to 2022: $100 is worth $969 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1962-to-2022/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1962 to 2022. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1962-to-2022/