Between 1977 and 2020, the Consumer Price Index went from 60.6 to 258.811.
Cumulatively, prices increased 327.1%, which works out to an average of
3.43% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1977 bought what
$0.23 buys in 2020.
Consumer prices rose 6.5% in 1977, ticking back up from 1976’s
5.8% as the economic recovery strengthened, wages climbed, and energy costs
pushed higher again. The year opened with a warning about that energy
dependence: record cold across the Midwest and Northeast in January and
February strained natural gas supplies so badly that schools and factories in
several states shut down for days to conserve fuel. Jimmy Carter, inaugurated
that January, made energy policy a centerpiece of his presidency, and
Congress created the cabinet-level Department of Energy that August to
consolidate programs built up piecemeal since the 1973 oil embargo. Culture
offered some relief from the anxiety: released that May, Star Wars became the
highest-grossing film in history to that point, drawing lines around theater
blocks for months. The year also closed an era in a different way. Elvis
Presley was found dead at his Graceland home on August 16 at age 42, drawing
tens of thousands of mourners to Memphis. A median household earned $13,572
in 1977, a new home sold for a median $48,800, and gas averaged 62 cents a
gallon. Consumer prices stood 512.1% above their 1913 level,
with the energy anxieties of the year setting up the harder shocks of 1978
and 1979.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1977 spending costs in 2020, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1977 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.43%
$427
Medical care
5.27%
$910
Housing
3.68%
$473
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.50%
$439
Food
3.32%
$408
Energy
3.27%
$399
Transportation
2.90%
$341
Apparel
0.95%
$150
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1977: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Long periods are sampled every 2 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 1977 to 2020: $100 is worth $427 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1977-to-2020/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1977 to 2020. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1977-to-2020/