Between 1968 and 2022, the Consumer Price Index went from 34.8 to 292.655.
Cumulatively, prices increased 741.0%, which works out to an average of
4.02% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1968 bought what
$0.12 buys in 2022.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1968 spending costs in 2022, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1968 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.02%
$841
Medical care
5.53%
$1,828
Energy
4.76%
$1,233
Housing
4.24%
$940
Food
4.08%
$865
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.95%
$811
Transportation
3.87%
$776
Apparel
1.61%
$237
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1968: 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 1968 to 2022: $100 is worth $841 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2022/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1968 to 2022. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1968-to-2022/