Between 1980 and 2022, the Consumer Price Index went from 82.4 to 292.655.
Cumulatively, prices increased 255.2%, which works out to an average of
3.06% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1980 bought what
$0.28 buys in 2022.
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.
The headline number is an average. Individual categories moved very differently over this
period. Here is what $100 of 1980 spending costs in 2022, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1980 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.06%
$355
Medical care
4.85%
$730
Housing
3.17%
$371
Core (all items less food & energy)
3.13%
$364
Food
3.04%
$352
Energy
3.01%
$347
Transportation
2.81%
$320
Apparel
0.80%
$140
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1980: 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 1980 to 2022: $100 is worth $355 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1980-to-2022/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1980 to 2022. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1980-to-2022/