Value of $100 in 1995, adjusted to 2024

What happened to prices between 1995 and 2024

Between 1995 and 2024, the Consumer Price Index went from 152.4 to 313.689. Cumulatively, prices increased 105.8%, which works out to an average of 2.52% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1995 bought what $0.49 buys in 2024: the 1995 dollar lost 51.4% of its purchasing power over these 29 years.

In 1995, gas averaged $1.15 a gallon, a new home cost roughly $133,900, and the median household earned about $34,100. Inflation ran at 2.8% for the year, little changed from 1994, as the Federal Reserve shifted from raising rates to cutting them. Having lifted its policy rate six times the year before, the Fed judged by July that the economy had cooled enough on its own, and trimmed rates instead, an outcome economists would later point to as a rare soft landing. The year opened with a currency crisis: Mexico’s peso lost roughly half its value against the dollar in a matter of weeks, and the U.S. Treasury and the IMF assembled a $50 billion rescue package, controversial in Congress, to stabilize it and keep the crisis from spreading to other emerging markets. Closer to home, a budget standoff between President Clinton and the Republican Congress shut down federal agencies twice, first for five days in November and then for 21 days spanning December into January 1996, the longest shutdown up to that point. The Postal Service raised the cost of a first-class stamp to 32 cents in January. Low, steady inflation was about the only calm part of 1995’s economic story.

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The destination year: 2024

In 2024, prices rose 2.9% and $100 from 1995 had the buying power of $206; the year's average CPI of 313.689 is the level behind every 2024 figure on this page.

2024 brought inflation close to normal without fully reaching it. Consumer prices rose 2.9% on average, the smallest yearly increase since 2020, and the December-to-December rate was also 2.9%. Gasoline averaged $3.30 a gallon, below 2023’s $3.52. Shelter stayed the biggest driver of the index, so the pace of price growth in categories that households can’t easily avoid, such as rent and insurance, lagged the drop in goods and energy costs.

The Federal Reserve declared progress in September, cutting its policy rate by half a point, the first reduction since the pandemic emergency, and then by a quarter point in November and again in December. Mortgage rates near 7% kept the housing market frozen for many would-be buyers.

Median household income was $83,730, the federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25, and a first-class stamp rose to 73 cents in July. After the November election, attention turned to how announced tariffs and tax policy might affect prices in 2025.

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