Inflation calculator

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks the average change over time in the prices urban consumers pay for a representative basket of goods and services — food, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education, and so on. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes CPI-U (the version for All Urban Consumers, covering about 93% of the U.S. population) every month, plus an annual average of those 12 monthly index values. The index is anchored to a base period of 1982-84 = 100, so a value of 313 means prices today are roughly 3.13× their 1982-84 level.

From the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, series CUUR0000SA0 (CPI-U, U.S. City Average, All Items, not seasonally adjusted). We use the annual averages of the 12 monthly index values, from 1913 (the earliest published) through the most recent published year. The full table is hardcoded in the site's source so the calculator works fully offline. For years past the latest BLS publication we extrapolate forward using the trailing-10-year compound rate and clearly label the result as estimated.

No. CPI-U is a national average. A dollar stretches further in a small midwestern town than in San Francisco or New York, and BLS does publish regional CPI subseries (e.g. for the Northeast, South, and individual large metros), but those are not used here. For most "what is X dollars from year Y worth today?" questions, the national CPI-U is the standard reference — it's what news headlines, Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, and the BLS's own inflation calculator use.

It's a compound (geometric) annualized rate, not an arithmetic average of yearly rates. The formula is rate = (CPI[to] / CPI[from])^{1/(to − from)} − 1. For example, going from CPI 130.7 (1990) to 313.7 (2024), the factor is about 2.40 over 34 years, which gives an average annual rate of 2.40^1/34 − 1 ≈ 2.6%. Plugging that 2.6% back into 34 years of compounding reproduces the 2.40× factor exactly.

Because CPI is a national average across a fixed basket; your individual basket is different. Housing, healthcare, and education have outpaced headline CPI for decades, while consumer electronics and clothing have lagged it (or even fallen). If you spend a high share of your income on the categories that have inflated most, your personal inflation rate will run higher than the national CPI. BLS publishes subindexes (CPI for shelter, food at home, medical care, etc.) if you want to see specific categories. The headline CPI used here is the appropriate baseline for general "purchasing power" comparisons but it isn't a personal cost-of-living index.

The BLS publishes the official annual-average CPI-U for a calendar year only after that year ends (typically in mid-January). Anything beyond the latest published annual average is a projection. This calculator extrapolates forward by applying the compound annual rate of the most recent 10 years of data — a reasonable default that captures recent trend inflation, but not a forecast. Treat anything labeled "estimated" as a rough indicator only; refresh the data once BLS publishes the final number.

Yes. The math is symmetric: adjusted = amount × CPI[to] / CPI[from]. If "to" is earlier than "from", the factor is less than 1 and you get the buying-power equivalent in the older (typically cheaper) era. The U.S. has had only a handful of deflationary years in the modern record (notably 1932-33, the late 1930s, and 2009), so most "from > to" comparisons just show how much fewer dollars you'd have needed in the past for the same buying power.