U.S. Inflation History Since 1774

Inflation in the United States can be traced back to the colonial era and the monetary disruptions surrounding the American Revolutionary War. While the official Consumer Price Index began in 1913, economists have reconstructed earlier price data using historical records of wages, commodities, and living costs.

By combining modern CPI data with earlier reconstructed price series, it is possible to estimate inflation trends in the United States from 1774 to the present, providing more than 250 years of purchasing-power history.

Largest Inflation and Deflation Periods in U.S. History

• 1775–1780: Extreme inflation during the American Revolutionary War due to Continental currency.
• 1861–1865: Major inflation during the American Civil War as the government issued Greenbacks.
• 1873–1896: One of the longest periods of sustained deflation following the Coinage Act of 1873 and the adoption of a stricter gold standard.
• 1973–1981: High inflation during the oil shocks and monetary expansion prior to the policies of Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve.
• 2021–2022: The highest U.S. inflation rates in decades following pandemic stimulus and supply disruptions.

Historical U.S. Inflation Rate 1774 – Current

Value of $1 from 1774 to Present

During the Colonial Period, a variety of coins circulated, including British pounds, German thalers, Spanish milled dollars, and even some coins produced by the colonies. After the Revolution, states were each allowed to mint their own coins under the Articles of Confederation. But due to a lack of coins, paper notes were often used. Prior to 1792, the U.S. had no standardized national currency.

On April 2, 1792 Congress passed the Coinage Act, establishing the first national mint in the United States. It was built in Philadelphia and was actually the first structure sanctioned by the United States government.

The following chart shows what one Dollar from 1774 would be worth over the years. The background image is an actual $6 note from 1776. It was redeemable in either Gold or Silver (as long as this particular Philadelphia issuer didn’t go bankrupt first). As you can see, at some points along the way, $1 was actually worth more than the original dollar. But from 1935 onward, it was downhill all the way.

 

Annual Average Inflation Chart since 1774

The above was purchasing power. Looking at the chart below, we can see several other things. First of all, we notice that there was a lot of volatility (both inflation and deflation) even while the U.S. was on the Gold Standard. But the interesting thing is that they tended to average out. Using our Historical Inflation Calculator we can see that there was only 4.09% total inflation from 1774 to 1900. That is a period of 126 years! Conversely, from 1900 to 2025, we’ve had 3,857.65% inflation!

There has been almost zero deflation since the Great Depression in the 1930s. It took a few years after the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 to figure out how to eliminate deflation, but they did it. They try to portray that as a good thing. But it is only good for debtors (like the government). Therefore, it has created incentives for everyone to become a debtor, benefiting banks but impoverishing ordinary citizens. Normally, productivity gains and innovation are supposed to reduce costs; a perfect example is computers. But through money printing, rather than reducing costs for consumers, the government has transferred much of that benefit to itself and the banks.

The following table shows the data displayed in this chart and used in our Historical Steampunk Calculator.

Historical Inflation since 1774

Inflationary and Deflationary Events (1774–1900)

• 1775–1783 – American Revolutionary War
  • Massive issuance of Continental currency (“Continentals”).
  • Severe hyperinflation and collapse of paper money.
• 1779–1781 – Collapse of Continental currency
  • “Not worth a Continental.”
  • Extreme inflation followed by monetary collapse.
• 1787 – Constitutional Convention
  • U.S. Constitution restricts states from issuing paper money.
  • Move toward hard-money stability (deflationary bias).
• 1791 – Creation of the First Bank of the United States
  • Stabilized currency and credit.
  • Moderately deflationary discipline compared with the colonial era.
    

    1795 Silver Dollar-Reverse

• 1792 – Coinage Act of 1792
  • Establishes a bimetallic standard (gold and silver).
  • Constrains money supply → long-term deflationary tendency.
• 1812–1815 – War of 1812
  • Heavy borrowing and banknote issuance.
  • Inflation during the war.
• 1819 – Panic of 1819
  • First major U.S. financial crisis.
  • Credit contraction → sharp deflation.
• 1836 – Expiration of the Second Bank of the United States charter
  • Banking instability increases.
• 1837 – Panic of 1837
  • Major banking collapse.
  • Deflation and depression lasting years.
• 1848 – California Gold Rush
  • Huge increase in global gold supply.
  • Inflationary pressure beginning in the 1850s.
• 1850s – Gold production boom
  • California + Australian discoveries.
  • Moderate inflation across gold-standard economies.
• 1857 – Panic of 1857
  • Financial crash and banking failures.
  • Deflationary contraction.

Civil War Era

• 1861–1865 – American Civil War
  • Massive government spending and borrowing.
  • Suspension of specie payments.
• 1862 – Legal Tender Act of 1862
  • Creation of “Greenbacks” (fiat paper currency).
  • Large wartime inflation.
• 1863–1864 – National Banking Acts
  • National banking system created.
  • Standardized banknote issuance.

Post–Civil War Deflation (1870s–1890s)

• 1866–1879 – Greenback contraction
  • Government reduces paper currency supply.
  • Long deflationary period.
• 1873 – Coinage Act of 1873
  • Ends free coinage of silver (“Crime of ’73”).
  • Tightens money supply → deflation.
• 1873 – Panic of 1873
  • Railroad speculation crash.
  • Long depression and price deflation.
• 1879 – Resumption of gold convertibility
  • Return to gold standard discipline.
• 1893 – Panic of 1893
  • Severe banking collapse and unemployment.
  • Sharp deflation.
• 1896 – Free Silver political movement peaks
  • Associated with William Jennings Bryan.
  • Demand for silver coinage to create inflation.
• 1896–1900 – New global gold discoveries
  • Alaska, South Africa, Yukon.
  • Begin reversing deflation → mild inflation.
• 1900 – Gold Standard Act of 1900
  • Official U.S. commitment to gold standard.
  • Stabilizes currency after decades of debate.

Early Inflation 1913-1919

Between 1913 and 1919, the United States underwent major economic and monetary changes. Woodrow Wilson became President in 1913, the Federal Reserve was created in December of that year, the federal income tax was introduced, and the government began tracking inflation with the creation of the Consumer Price Index.

• 1913: Woodrow Wilson becomes President. Congress creates the Federal Reserve, establishing America’s central bank. The federal income tax also begins the same year.
• 1914–1916: World War I starts in Europe. The U.S. remains neutral at first, but American industry ramps up production and lending to Allied nations.
• 1917: The U.S. enters WWI. Federal spending surges. Massive war bonds are issued, and bank credit expands rapidly. The Fed supports this financing by keeping money flowing.
• 1917–1919: Consumer prices rise sharply — roughly 10% total inflation from 1913–1919 (with most of it concentrated during the war years).
• 1918: WWI ends.
• 1919: The economy overheats from wartime stimulus, setting up the severe 1920–21 deflationary recession, when prices fall, and credit tightens.

Despite the U.S. being on a gold standard, prices inflated by approximately 2% from January 1913 through December, followed by about 1% in 1914 and 2% in 1915. These early increases reflected a combination of expanding bank credit, gold inflows, and economic disruptions associated with the outbreak of World War I in Europe. Although the U.S. did not enter the conflict until 1917, domestic production and financial activity increasingly supported Allied war efforts.

U.S. Inflation accelerated after American entry into World War I, as federal spending grew rapidly and large volumes of government debt were issued to finance the war. The Federal Reserve supported this process by maintaining liquidity in the banking system.

Prices rose significantly through 1919, before declining during the sharp recession of 1920–21. This period marked an early test of the newly created central banking system and illustrated how wartime fiscal demands and monetary conditions together influenced price levels in the United States.

Year	1913	1914	1915	1916	1917	1918	1919
Inflation	2.04%*	1%	1.98%	12.62%	18.10%	20.44%	14.55%

*Note: 1913 is only 11 months because the index starts in January; it doesn’t include any inflation for the month of January.

Prior to the creation of Central Banks, wars were limited by the amount of money a government could borrow. But with the creation of fiat money and unlimited printing, wars have fewer limitations.

The remainder of this page presents both the historical inflation rates since 1914 and the CPI index since 1913 in both table form and in chart form.

If you are more interested in recent events than historical inflation and historical CPI numbers, see the Current U.S. Inflation and Current CPI page or the Annual Inflation Chart page.

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Domestic Gold Standard Ends (1933–1934)

• In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, which required Americans to turn in most privately held gold to the government.
• Gold ownership by U.S. citizens was largely prohibited, and dollars were no longer redeemable for gold domestically.
• In 1934, the Gold Reserve Act transferred all monetary gold to the U.S. Treasury and devalued the dollar from $20.67/oz to $35/oz.

Result:

• The U.S. effectively left the domestic gold standard, but the dollar was still tied to gold internationally.

Bretton Woods Gold System (1944–1971)

• Under the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944:
  • The U.S. dollar became the global reserve currency.
  • Foreign governments could convert dollars to gold at $35 per ounce.
  • Other currencies were pegged to the dollar.

Result:

• The dollar remained partially on a gold standard, but only for foreign governments.

Final End of the Gold Standard (1971)

• On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold.
• This event is known as the Nixon Shock.

Result:

• Foreign governments could no longer exchange dollars for gold.
• The world shifted to pure fiat currencies.

Annual Inflation Chart since 1989

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Table of Historical Inflation Rates
in Percent (1914-2026)

Table data can be reversed by clicking on the first column, or sorted by values in the last column, searched by data (like year) using the search box, and expanded or contracted using the “show entries”. Scroll through the pages at the bottom or increase the table length (using “show more entries”).

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Historical CPI Index Table
(1914-2026)

A CPI of 195 indicates 95% inflation since 1982*, the commonly quoted inflation rate of say 3% is actually the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index from a year earlier.

The “Ave” on this table is the Average of the individual Inflation rates for that year. Caution: you cannot just add the inflation rates from two consecutive years or even average them to find the total inflation between two dates. If you would like to calculate the inflation rate between two dates, you must base your calculations on the actual CPI index, or you can use our handy, easy-to-use Inflation calculator.

* Actually the index applies to an average of 1982-1984 so there is no specific date when the index was exactly 100. (If you check the chart here you will see it was somewhere between July and August of 1983. But the reference year is commonly referred to as 1982.)

CPI Data Table

Note: October 2025 numbers are the average of the two surrounding months because the BLS did not create numbers due to the government shutdown.
In January 2017, the BLS modified the numbers for May – August 2016 due to a miscalculation based on prescription drug prices.
The original numbers were as follows:
May 2016: 240.236, June 2016: 241.038, July 2016: 240.647, August 2016: 240.854. The new numbers are:
May 2016: 240.229, June 2016: 241.018, July 2016: 240.628, August 2016: 240.849. This change made a very minimal difference in the annual inflation rate.

Blank Cells indicate that the data is not available because it has not been released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics yet.

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Long-Term Cumulative Inflation Chart

As we passed the 100th anniversary of the creation of the FED what have they done to our currency?

The following chart shows the trajectory since 1913.

Averaging vs. Geometric Mean

Note: We have updated the method of calculating the averages. That means that instead of taking the annual inflation rates for each of the ten years of the decade and then averaging them all together, we have used the geometric mean. The geometric mean is also called the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and is typically used to calculate things like average investment return.

This generally produces a slightly lower number, but it is the accepted method of calculating average percentage rates. According to the University of Toronto Mathematics network, “The geometric mean is relevant any time several quantities multiply together to produce a product. The geometric mean answers the question, “if all the quantities had the same value, what would that value have to be in order to achieve the same product?”   For more information on arithmetic vs. geometric means, see: Applications of the Geometric Mean.

The typical way of averaging is called the “arithmetic mean.” So exactly how much difference does using the geometric mean make vs. the arithmetic mean make in our data? Interestingly, the answer is “that depends.” In our data, some decades were almost identical, and others were several tenths of a percent apart. The 2000s decade (2000-2009) changed from 2.57% to 2.54%. The biggest change came during the six years from 1913 to 1919. The arithmetic mean produced 8.7% while the geometric mean actually produced a significantly higher number of 9.8%.

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Average Inflation by Decade Chart

The following chart shows the average annual inflation by decade. Each bar represents the geometric mean for the decade (not the total cumulative inflation for that 10 year period ). This means that despite inflation being low from 1913 – 1915 there was enough inflation from 1916 through the end of 1919 to raise the average up to 9.8%. The 1920s had very moderate inflation, and the 1930’s had “The Great Depression,” which brought prices down somewhat but still not back to 1913 levels. For two of the decades below you would think the numbers were large enough to be for the entire decade rather than the average annual rate for a single year. Both the teens and the 1970’s had huge annual inflation rates with the 1970s averaging slightly less than the 1920s at “only” 7.25%.

Note: There was so much inflation in January 1920 that if you calculate the average from the end of January 1920 to December 1929, the average for the decade is -0.09%, but if you calculate it correctly from the end of December 1919 to December 1929, that single month increases the average to 0.38% for the decade.

Note: The reason to calculate from December through December is that the index is set for the end of the month, so in order to get a full year, you need to use the index from December 31^st through December 31^st rather than from January 31^st through December 31^st.

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 To see an in depth view of the inflationary makeup of each decade:
|1913-19 | 1920-29 | 1930-39 | 1940-49 | 1950-59 | 1960-69 | 1970-79 | 1980-89 | 1990-1999 |

|Coming Soon | 2000-09 | 2010- Present |

Long-Term Inflation

The 1920s had very moderate inflation, and the 1930’s had “The Great Depression,” which brought prices down somewhat but still not back to 1913 levels. We can tell that easily by looking at the actual historical CPI index. The average CPI Index in 1913 was 9.9, the average CPI index in 1939 was 13.9, or roughly 40% inflation in 26 years, despite the Depression. So we can see that over the long term, inflation almost always increases. From the chart above, we only see one decade that had falling prices, and that was during the depression. And even then, the following decade more than made up for it. Return to Top

Average Decade Inflation and CPI Index Table

Average Inflation and CPI by Decade

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Historical Total Inflation for Each Decade

Looking at the average inflation rates often gives us the impression that “low” inflation rates like 2% aren’t so bad. For instance: You may think that 7% inflation in the 1970’s is terrible, but 2% or 3% per year isn’t so bad, right? The average annual inflation from 1990 through the end of 2018 was 2.46%.  Well, the total cumulative inflation for the 28 years from January 1990 through November 2020 is 102.40%. In other words, something that cost $100 in January of 1990 would cost $202.40 in December of 2020. In other words, prices more than doubled (i.e., purchasing power fell by half), and that is what happens at “low” inflation rates.

In the chart above, we looked at the Average Annual inflation over each decade; now we will look at the total cumulative inflation over each decade.

This Chart shows the cumulative Inflation Rate by decade. Each bar represents the total inflation from January 1st on the year ending in a zero and ending on December 31st of the year ending with a 9. (The one exception is the teen years, since they only started tracking inflation in 1913.) Typically, we calculate something like, from January 1920 through December 1929.  Note: To calculate this, you must use December 1919 through December 1929 data since the Consumer Price Index is set as of the last day of the month.

The two worst decades for inflation were the teens, which racked up almost 100% inflation (prices almost doubled) in the seven years that were tracked. The other really bad decade was the 1970’s, which accumulated slightly over 100% inflation in ten years. The 1940’s and the 1980’s were also bad, with over 60% inflation each.

On the other hand, the 1930’s had deflation for the decade as prices actually ended lower during the decade than they started.

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It is interesting to note that the inflation for the “teens” decade was the highest at 8.70%, and the 70’s were close on their heels at 7.09%, while the 20’s had virtually zero inflation.

The decade of the 30’s showed negative inflation or true deflation, where prices actually declined on an annual basis. It isn’t hard to figure out that prices were falling during the depression (the 30’s).

Note that the most prosperous decades were those of low inflation, like the roaring twenties, the fabulous fifties, and the nineties. Both the 20s and the 90s culminated in a stock market crash, while the decade with deflation is known for the poverty it included.  Interestingly, deflation doesn’t always equal depression. A truly healthy economy with increasing productivity and no increase in money supply will result in lower consumer prices and even more wealth to go around.

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What caused Prices to Decline During the 1920’s?

Falling prices are understandable because of the massive depression in the 1930’s, but the decline may be a bit surprising for the “Roaring” 1920’s. So what happened?

World War I began in 1914 and ended in 1918, prompting the government to expand the money supply to finance the war. After the war ended, the economy contracted to absorb the excesses of the previous decade, thus resulting in the deflation of the 1920’s.  Interestingly, the year 1920 was more like the teens since 1920 actually had 15.72% inflation in a single year. But the rest of the decade erased that and more.

Deflation began a year later as prices deflated by -10.94% in 1921 and by another -6.13% in 1922.  Prices stabilized and were relatively level for the middle of the decade, but then fell –1.93% in 1927 and another -1.15% in 1928. The Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) began January 1920 at 19.3 and ended December 1929 at 17.2.

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You might also like:

• Confederate Inflation 1861-1865
• FED Monetary Policy and Inflation
• Current Inflation Rate
• Annual Inflation
• Steampunk Historical Inflation Calculator

Information about Individual Decades:

• WWI: The beginning of the of the CPI the Inflationary period 1913 -1919
• The Roaring Twenties Inflation and Deflation 1920-1929
• The Great Depression Deflationary 1930s  1930-1939
• World War II:  the volatile 1940’s  High and Low Inflation 1940-1949
• The 1950s Happy Days  Inflation and CPI 1950-1959
• The 1960s, the age of possibility, Low Inflation 1960-1969
• The Inflationary 1970s: Inflation and CPI 1970-1979
• The Reagan Era: Lower Inflation 1980-1989
• The Decade of Free Enterprise Inflation 1990-1999