Every U.S. inflation rate below is the year-over-year change in the annual-average CPI-U, the same
series (CUUR0000SA0) the calculator runs on, so any row here matches what that
tool returns for the same year. Coverage runs 1914 through 2025; 1913 has no prior year to compare
against, and 2026 is still a provisional BLS estimate subject to revision, so it’s left out.
1918 holds the record for the modern series, +18.0%, as World War I spending competed with civilian
buyers for the same scarce goods. The worst deflation came 14 years later: 1932 fell 9.9% as bank
failures and frozen credit pushed the Great Depression toward its
bottom. The postwar surge of 1947, +14.4%, came from price controls lifting all at once rather than
gradually. The most recent extreme, 2022’s 8.0%, is still the highest annual rate since 1981, though
it stayed well under the 13.5% peak of 1980 that ended the Great
Inflation of the 1970s.
Reading the table
Each rate is the percent change in the annual-average CPI-U from the prior year, not a month-to-month
figure, so it smooths out the seasonal swings a single month’s release shows. For a decade-by-decade
rollup instead of year-by-year detail, see inflation by decade; for
how the annual average itself gets built from monthly basket prices, see how inflation is
calculated. To turn any stretch in this table into an actual
dollar figure, for example what $100 in 1913 would be worth in 2025, run
it through the calculator.
Sources
Annual and monthly CPI-U (CUUR0000SA0) data comes from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Provisional-year figures are replaced once BLS finalizes each
month; the site’s own data source and update log records when that last happened.