Value of $100 in 2020, adjusted to 2025

What happened to prices between 2020 and 2025

Between 2020 and 2025, the Consumer Price Index went from 258.811 to 321.943. Cumulatively, prices increased 24.4%, which works out to an average of 4.46% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 2020 bought what $0.80 buys in 2025: the 2020 dollar lost 19.6% of its purchasing power over these 5 years.

2020 was the year the pandemic rewired the price data without triggering the inflation spike that followed it. Consumer prices rose just 1.2% for the year, the mildest pace since 2015, as COVID-19 lockdowns emptied roads, closed airports, and crushed energy demand. Oil told the starkest story: on April 20, U.S. crude futures fell to about negative $37 a barrel, the first negative settlement in the market’s history, as storage capacity ran out and no one wanted the physical barrels. Gasoline followed it down, falling to about $1.80 a gallon nationally that month before recovering to average $2.17 for the year. Grocery prices moved the other way: pantry stocking and meatpacking-plant disruptions pushed food-at-home costs up faster than usual, a rare case of food and energy pulling the index in opposite directions. Washington answered with the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, signed March 27, which sent $1,200 payments to most adults and added $600 a week to unemployment benefits as states ordered widespread business closures. The Federal Reserve cut its policy rate to near zero in two emergency moves that same month and pledged to buy Treasury and mortgage bonds “in the amounts needed” to keep credit markets working, an open-ended commitment beyond even its 2008 response. None of it showed up in the CPI yet: the stimulus, the supply shocks, and the reopening whiplash that followed would build into the fastest inflation in four decades over the next two years.

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The destination year: 2025

In 2025, prices rose 2.6% and $100 from 2020 had the buying power of $124; 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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