$100 in 1980 is worth $150 in 1989,
because prices increased 50.5% over that period, an average of
4.65% a year.
$100 in 1980 has
the same buying power as
$150
in 1989
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
50.5%
Average inflation rate
4.65% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$150
Price difference ($100 base)
$50.49
CPI in 1980
82.4
CPI in 1989
124
Inflation in 1980
13.50%
Inflation in 1989
4.82%
$100 in 1980 → 1989
$150
$100 in 1989 → 1980
$66.45
What happened to prices between 1980 and 1989
Between 1980 and 1989, the Consumer Price Index went from 82.4 to 124.
Cumulatively, prices increased 50.5%, which works out to an average of
4.65% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1980 bought what
$0.66 buys in 1989: the 1980 dollar
lost 33.5% of its purchasing power over
these 9 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 1989 at the same ratio, 1.50: $1,000 becomes
$1,505, and $10,000 becomes $15,049.
Amount in 1980
Value in 1989
$1.00
$1.50
$5.00
$7.52
$10.00
$15.05
$20.00
$30.10
$50.00
$75.24
$100
$150
$500
$752
$1,000
$1,505
$5,000
$7,524
$10,000
$15,049
$100,000
$150,485
$1,000,000
$1,504,854
Inflation by spending category, 1980–1989
Between 1980 and 1989, medical care rose the most, up 99.3%, while energy rose the least, up 9.7%, against 50.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1980
spending costs in 1989, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1980 →
All items (CPI-U)
4.65%
$150
Medical care
7.97%
$199
Core (all items less food & energy)
5.34%
$160
Housing
4.74%
$152
Food
4.14%
$144
Transportation
3.59%
$137
Apparel
3.00%
$130
Energy
1.03%
$110
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 $126 by
1984, on its way to $150 in 1989; 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 1.9% in 1986.
In 1989, prices rose 4.8% and $100 from 1980 had the buying
power of $150; the year's average CPI of 124 is the level
behind every 1989 figure on this page.
1989 closed out a decade that began in economic crisis and ended in a long,
calmer expansion. Inflation for the year came in at 4.8%, higher than the
mid-decade lull but still roughly a third of the 13.5% peak that had opened
the decade in 1980. The federal minimum wage, unchanged at $3.35 an hour
since January 1981, had gone longer without an increase than at any point
since Congress created it, and had lost close to a third of its purchasing
power to inflation in the meantime; lawmakers would finally raise it to
$3.80 the following April. The decade’s other unfinished business came due
in August, when Congress passed FIRREA, the law that created the Resolution
Trust Corporation to seize and sell off the hundreds of savings and loan
institutions that a decade of deregulation and risky lending had left
insolvent, a bailout that eventually cost taxpayers over $100 billion. On
Wall Street, the recovery was already complete: the Dow Jones Industrial
Average closed 1989 at a record high, just over two years after Black
Monday’s 22.6% single-day crash, capping the bull market that had begun at
the Dow’s 776 low in August 1982. Between the S&L bailout, a wage floor
eroded by years without a raise, and a stock market at new highs, 1989
captured how unevenly the decade’s disinflation had been felt.
MLA: “Inflation from 1980 to 1989: $100 is worth $150 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1980-to-1989/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1980 to 1989. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1980-to-1989/