Inflation Rate Since a Given Year

Two numbers that answer different questions

Pick a year and this page gives you both: how much prices have risen in total since then, and the average yearly rate that adds up to that total. They are easy to confuse and they are not interchangeable.

• Total inflation is cumulative. Over a long span it reaches figures that look implausible — several hundred or several thousand percent — because it compounds.
• The average rate is the constant yearly rate that would compound to the same total. It is a summary, not a description: no individual year has to have looked like it.

A span of fifty years with a 3% average contains years above 10% and years where prices fell. The average smooths all of that away, which is what makes it comparable across spans and what makes it misleading if you read it as "what inflation was".

Where the numbers come from

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each past year is the annual average BLS publishes for it — the agency's own figure, not one derived here — and today is the most recent published month, currently September 2026. Years available run from 1913 to 2025 — every year the agency has closed with a published annual average.

Because the answer is a function of that published table and nothing else, it does not shift from one day to the next. It changes when a new month is released.

Inflation since a given year

• Inflation since 1913 · what $100 in 1913 is worth
• Inflation since 1950 · what $100 in 1950 is worth
• Inflation since 1960 · what $100 in 1960 is worth
• Inflation since 1970 · what $100 in 1970 is worth
• Inflation since 1980 · what $100 in 1980 is worth
• Inflation since 1990 · what $100 in 1990 is worth
• Inflation since 2000 · what $100 in 2000 is worth
• Inflation since 2010 · what $100 in 2010 is worth
• Inflation since 2020 · what $100 in 2020 is worth

Reading a long span honestly

The further back the starting year, the less a single ratio means. Comparing today with 1913 compares two different economies, two different baskets of goods, and two different ideas of what a household buys. The arithmetic is exact; what it stands for gets vaguer the longer the span. Short spans are the ones where the number is closest to what people intuitively mean by it.