$100 in 1968 is worth $105 in 1969,
because prices increased 5.5% over that period, an average of
5.46% a year.
$100 in 1968 has
the same buying power as
$105
in 1969
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
5.5%
Average inflation rate
5.46% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$105
Price difference ($100 base)
$5.46
CPI in 1968
34.8
CPI in 1969
36.7
Inflation in 1968
4.19%
Inflation in 1969
5.46%
$100 in 1968 → 1969
$105
$100 in 1969 → 1968
$94.82
What happened to prices between 1968 and 1969
Between 1968 and 1969, the Consumer Price Index went from 34.8 to 36.7.
Cumulatively, prices increased 5.5%, which works out to an average of
5.46% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1968 bought what
$0.95 buys in 1969: the 1968 dollar
lost 5.2% of its purchasing power over
these 1 years.
Consumer prices rose 4.2% in 1968, up sharply from 1967’s
3.1% and the fastest pace in 17 years, as Vietnam War spending and a tight
labor market pushed inflation higher despite the Federal Reserve’s
earlier tightening. The year was marked by political violence: Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a motel balcony in Memphis on April
4, touching off rioting in more than 100 cities, and Robert F. Kennedy was
shot in Los Angeles on June 5, moments after winning California’s
Democratic presidential primary, and died the next day. Washington tried
to answer the inflation problem directly that June 28, when Congress
passed a 10% income tax surcharge, the Revenue and Expenditure Control
Act, temporarily raising taxes and cutting spending to cool an economy
overheated by war and Great Society outlays; prices kept accelerating
anyway. The cost of living rose in smaller, more visible ways too:
first-class postage climbed to 6 cents that January 7, and the minimum
wage rose to $1.60 an hour that February 1, the final step of the
increase Congress had set two years earlier. Consumer prices finished
1968 251.5% above their 1913 level.
Every 1968 amount converts to 1969 at the same ratio, 1.05: $1,000 becomes
$1,055, and $10,000 becomes $10,546.
Amount in 1968
Value in 1969
$1.00
$1.05
$5.00
$5.27
$10.00
$10.55
$20.00
$21.09
$50.00
$52.73
$100
$105
$500
$527
$1,000
$1,055
$5,000
$5,273
$10,000
$10,546
$100,000
$105,460
$1,000,000
$1,054,598
Inflation by spending category, 1968–1969
Between 1968 and 1969, medical care rose the most, up 6.7%, while energy rose the least, up 2.5%, against 5.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1968
spending costs in 1969, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1968 →
All items (CPI-U)
5.46%
$105
Medical care
6.69%
$107
Housing
6.25%
$106
Core (all items less food & energy)
5.79%
$106
Apparel
5.77%
$106
Food
5.10%
$105
Transportation
4.08%
$104
Energy
2.48%
$102
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1968: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1968
$100 from 1968grew to $105 by 1969; each row
shows the CPI, that year's inflation rate, and the running value.
In 1969, prices rose 5.5% and $100 from 1968 had the buying
power of $105; the year's average CPI of 36.7 is the level
behind every 1969 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 5.5% in 1969, up from 1968’s 4.2% and
the fastest pace since the Korean War era, as years of Vietnam War
spending, a labor market with unemployment under 4%, and expansionary
fiscal policy finally showed up fully in prices. Richard Nixon was
inaugurated that January 20, pledging to curb rising prices without wage
and price controls, a position he would reverse within two years. The
decade’s most triumphant moment came that July 20, when Neil Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon while Michael Collins orbited above,
fulfilling the goal Kennedy had set in 1961 of landing a man on the lunar
surface before the decade’s end. Culture and protest both reached new
extremes that year: an estimated 400,000 people gathered on a dairy farm
in Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock music festival that August, and a
police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village that
June touched off days of resistance now credited with launching the
modern gay rights movement. Consumer prices finished the decade 270.7%
above their 1913 level, up 24.0% from where they stood in
1960. The 1960s had opened with inflation near 1% a year and closed with
prices rising faster than at any point since Korea, setting up the Great
Inflation that would define the
1970s. First-class postage held at 6 cents, and the minimum wage stayed
at $1.60 an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1968 to 1969: $100 is worth $105 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-1969/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1968 to 1969. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-1969/