$100 in 1975 is worth $179 in 1982,
because prices increased 79.4% over that period, an average of
8.70% a year.
$100 in 1975 has
the same buying power as
$179
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
79.4%
Average inflation rate
8.70% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$179
Price difference ($100 base)
$79.37
CPI in 1975
53.8
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1975
9.13%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1975 → 1982
$179
$100 in 1982 → 1975
$55.75
What happened to prices between 1975 and 1982
Between 1975 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 53.8 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 79.4%, which works out to an average of
8.70% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1975 bought what
$0.56 buys in 1982: the 1975 dollar
lost 44.2% of its purchasing power over
these 7 years.
Consumer prices rose 9.1% in 1975, easing slightly from 1974’s
11.0% but still running far above anything the country had experienced before
the decade began. The recession that started in November 1973, the deepest
since the Great Depression, bottomed out that March, yet unemployment kept
climbing through the year and touched 9%, a combination of high inflation and
high joblessness that had no precedent in the postwar data. Vietnam ended
that April 30, when North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon and the last
Americans were evacuated by helicopter from the U.S. embassy roof. Fiscal
strain hit closer to home too: New York City, facing bankruptcy after years
of borrowing to paper over budget gaps, asked Washington for help that
October. President Ford’s initial refusal produced the Daily News headline
“Ford to City: Drop Dead,” though he ultimately signed a federal loan package
that December. Amid the gloom, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft
that April in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to sell a version of the BASIC
programming language for the Altair 8800, one of the first personal
computers sold to hobbyists. A median household earned $11,800 in 1975, a new
home sold for a median $39,300, and first-class postage held at 10 cents,
unchanged since 1974’s increase. Consumer prices stood 443.4%
above their 1913 level, with the decade barely past its
midpoint.
Every 1975 amount converts to 1982 at the same ratio, 1.79: $1,000 becomes
$1,794, and $10,000 becomes $17,937.
Amount in 1975
Value in 1982
$1.00
$1.79
$5.00
$8.97
$10.00
$17.94
$20.00
$35.87
$50.00
$89.68
$100
$179
$500
$897
$1,000
$1,794
$5,000
$8,968
$10,000
$17,937
$100,000
$179,368
$1,000,000
$1,793,680
Inflation by spending category, 1975–1982
Between 1975 and 1982, energy rose the most, up 135.6%, while apparel rose the least, up 34.9%, against 79.4% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1975
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1975 →
All items (CPI-U)
8.70%
$179
Energy
13.03%
$236
Medical care
9.99%
$195
Transportation
9.90%
$194
Housing
9.70%
$191
Core (all items less food & energy)
8.56%
$178
Food
7.22%
$163
Apparel
4.37%
$135
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1975: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Decade by decade: 1975 to 1982
Prices climbed fastest in the 1970s, averaging 8.90% a year, and slowest in the 1980s (8.22% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1975–1982 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1975, at end
1975–1980
8.90%
53.2%
$153
1980–1982
8.22%
17.1%
$179
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1975
$100 from 1975 had already become $121 by
1978, on its way to $179 in 1982; 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 the smallest rise was 5.8% in 1976.
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1975 had the buying
power of $179; the year's average CPI of 96.5 is the level
behind every 1982 figure on this page.
1982 was the hard bottom of the disinflation Paul Volcker had set in motion.
Consumer prices rose just 6.2% for the year, roughly half of 1981’s rate and a
fraction of the 13.5% peak from two years earlier. The price fell because
demand had been crushed: the recession that began in July 1981 did not
officially end until November 1982, and unemployment kept climbing even as
the economy technically began to recover, reaching 10.8% in November and
December, the highest rate since the Great Depression. Manufacturing and
construction, especially the auto and housing industries starved of credit by
double-digit interest rates, bore the worst of it. Abroad, Mexico’s August
announcement that it could not service its foreign debt opened a Latin
American debt crisis that spread across the region and forced the Federal
Reserve and IMF into emergency lending. The stress on the financial system
pushed Volcker to start easing interest rates that October, stepping back
from the strict money-supply targets he had followed since 1979. Markets read
the shift correctly: the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.92 in
mid-August, and the rally that followed became the opening leg of the 1980s
bull market. By year’s end, the trade-off Volcker had bet on was becoming
visible: much lower inflation, at the cost of the worst unemployment in 40
years.
MLA: “Inflation from 1975 to 1982: $100 is worth $179 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1975-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1975 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1975-to-1982/