$100 in 1982 is worth $128 in 1989,
because prices increased 28.5% over that period, an average of
3.65% a year.
$100 in 1982 has
the same buying power as
$128
in 1989
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
28.5%
Average inflation rate
3.65% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$128
Price difference ($100 base)
$28.50
CPI in 1982
96.5
CPI in 1989
124
Inflation in 1982
6.16%
Inflation in 1989
4.82%
$100 in 1982 → 1989
$128
$100 in 1989 → 1982
$77.82
What happened to prices between 1982 and 1989
Between 1982 and 1989, the Consumer Price Index went from 96.5 to 124.
Cumulatively, prices increased 28.5%, which works out to an average of
3.65% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1982 bought what
$0.78 buys in 1989: the 1982 dollar
lost 22.2% of its purchasing power over
these 7 years.
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.
Every 1982 amount converts to 1989 at the same ratio, 1.28: $1,000 becomes
$1,285, and $10,000 becomes $12,850.
Amount in 1982
Value in 1989
$1.00
$1.28
$5.00
$6.42
$10.00
$12.85
$20.00
$25.70
$50.00
$64.25
$100
$128
$500
$642
$1,000
$1,285
$5,000
$6,425
$10,000
$12,850
$100,000
$128,497
$1,000,000
$1,284,974
Inflation by spending category, 1982–1989
Between 1982 and 1989, medical care rose the most, up 61.4%, while energy fell 4.9%, against 28.5% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1982
spending costs in 1989, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1982 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.65%
$128
Medical care
7.08%
$161
Core (all items less food & energy)
4.34%
$135
Food
3.64%
$128
Housing
3.47%
$127
Apparel
2.79%
$121
Transportation
2.35%
$118
Energy
-0.72%
$95.06
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1982: recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1982
$100 from 1982 had already become $112 by
1985, on its way to $128 in 1989; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 4.8% in 1989, and the smallest rise was 1.9% in 1986.
In 1989, prices rose 4.8% and $100 from 1982 had the buying
power of $128; 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 1982 to 1989: $100 is worth $128 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1982-to-1989/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1982 to 1989. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1982-to-1989/