Value of $100 in 1999, adjusted to 2025

What happened to prices between 1999 and 2025

Between 1999 and 2025, the Consumer Price Index went from 166.6 to 321.943. Cumulatively, prices increased 93.2%, which works out to an average of 2.57% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1999 bought what $0.52 buys in 2025: the 1999 dollar lost 48.3% of its purchasing power over these 26 years.

The median household earned about $40,700 in 1999, gas averaged $1.17 a gallon, and a new home cost roughly $161,000. Inflation ran at 2.2% for the year, ticking back up from 1998’s decade low as oil prices recovered from their collapse. The decade closed with two changes to the financial system that would shape the one after it: on January 1, the euro launched as an accounting currency across 11 European countries, trading alongside national currencies like the French franc and German mark ahead of physical cash in 2002, and in November, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, tearing down the Depression-era wall between commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers. Stock markets, meanwhile, were absorbed in a boom of their own: the Nasdaq surged through the year on soaring internet-stock valuations, and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates three times in the second half of 1999 partly to cool the exuberance, even as it pumped extra liquidity into the banking system to guard against any disruption from the Y2K rollover. A first-class stamp cost 33 cents. Inflation had spent the decade falling from 1990’s 5.4% peak to averages closer to 2-3%, and 1999 closed it out almost exactly where the 1990s as a whole had settled.

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The destination year: 2025

In 2025, prices rose 2.6% and $100 from 1999 had the buying power of $193; the year's average CPI of 321.943 is the level behind every 2025 figure on this page.

2025 was a year of trade policy and data disruptions rather than an inflation surge. Consumer prices rose 2.6% on average, a step down from 2024’s 2.9% and well below the 8.0% of 2022. Tariffs announced in April pushed up prices for some imported goods, including furniture, apparel, and auto parts, but the effect on the overall index was smaller than many forecasters feared at the start of the year, in part because retailers absorbed some of the cost and demand for services stayed steady.

The Federal Reserve held its policy rate steady through the first half of the year, then began cutting again in September, lowering it in three quarter-point steps to 3.50–3.75% by December.

The federal government shutdown that began October 1 lasted 43 days, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not publish a CPI for October 2025 because the survey data could not be collected. The federal minimum wage stayed at $7.25, and a first-class stamp rose to 78 cents in July.

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