$100 in 1980 is worth $117 in 1982,
because prices increased 17.1% over that period, an average of
8.22% a year.
$100 in 1980 has
the same buying power as
$117
in 1982
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
17.1%
Average inflation rate
8.22% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$117
Price difference ($100 base)
$17.11
CPI in 1980
82.4
CPI in 1982
96.5
Inflation in 1980
13.50%
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
$100 in 1980 → 1982
$117
$100 in 1982 → 1980
$85.39
What happened to prices between 1980 and 1982
Between 1980 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 82.4 to 96.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 17.1%, which works out to an average of
8.22% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1980 bought what
$0.85 buys in 1982: the 1980 dollar
lost 14.6% of its purchasing power over
these 2 years.
1980 sat at the very peak of the Great Inflation. Prices rose 13.5% in that
single year, mortgage rates were climbing toward 16%, and the Federal Reserve
under Paul Volcker was administering the painful interest-rate medicine that
would finally break the inflationary spiral, at the cost of the deep 1981–82
recession. No single year looms larger in how Americans think about inflation.
Every 1980 amount converts to 1982 at the same ratio, 1.17: $1,000 becomes
$1,171, and $10,000 becomes $11,711.
Amount in 1980
Value in 1982
$1.00
$1.17
$5.00
$5.86
$10.00
$11.71
$20.00
$23.42
$50.00
$58.56
$100
$117
$500
$586
$1,000
$1,171
$5,000
$5,856
$10,000
$11,711
$100,000
$117,112
$1,000,000
$1,171,117
Inflation by spending category, 1980–1982
Between 1980 and 1982, medical care rose the most, up 23.5%, while apparel rose the least, up 7.6%, against 17.1% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1980
spending costs in 1982, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1980 →
All items (CPI-U)
8.22%
$117
Medical care
11.13%
$123
Housing
9.31%
$119
Core (all items less food & energy)
8.89%
$119
Transportation
8.04%
$117
Energy
7.40%
$115
Food
5.93%
$112
Apparel
3.73%
$108
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1980: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1980
$100 from 1980 had already become $110 by
1981, on its way to $117 in 1982; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 10.3% in 1981, and the smallest rise was 6.2% in 1982.
In 1982, prices rose 6.2% and $100 from 1980 had the buying
power of $117; 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 1980 to 1982: $100 is worth $117 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1980-to-1982/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1980 to 1982. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1980-to-1982/