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Price change {{ resultsReady ? percent(values.cumulative_percent) : '—' }} Annualized {{ resultsReady ? annualizedLabel : '—' }}
US dollars in the source year, from $0 to $1 trillion.
$
The year your amount belongs to.
Published annual averages, 1913–2025. Choose an earlier year to reverse the comparison. US CPI-U, all items, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted; 1982–84 = 100. Bundled BLS data, retrieved October 29, 2026. The published 2025 average uses 11 months; October is missing. A broad urban basket: your spending may differ. No currency conversion or investment returns.
Optional actual salary, price or budget. Leave blank to omit the real-value comparison.
$

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The chart is unavailable. Annual observations still contains the exact values.

YearAnnual CPI (1982–84=100)Equivalent amount (USD)Price change from source (%)Copy
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Calculation method
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Similar tools

A pay rise can leave someone with less purchasing power when prices rise faster than income. Inflation adjustment puts salaries, prices and budgets from different years on a common basis, so the dollar increase can be judged against the change in what those dollars buy.

Inflation measures an increase in the general level of consumer prices. Individual prices can move differently. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) measures consumer price changes through the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI for All Urban Consumers, or CPI-U, combines goods and services such as housing, food and transport, with weights reflecting household spending.

Nominal amount
The dollars stated on a payslip, receipt or budget, without an adjustment for changing prices.
Real purchasing power
The spending power of those dollars after allowing for price changes, often expressed in the dollars of a chosen comparison year.

Converting an older salary into later-year dollars gives a benchmark for maintaining its purchasing power. Converting a later salary back into earlier-year dollars expresses the comparison in the opposite direction. For an individual product, the inflation-adjusted amount is a broad consumer-price benchmark; its actual selling price also depends on changes specific to that product.

The price level and the inflation rate describe different things. A lower positive inflation rate means prices are rising more slowly. Deflation means the price level has fallen. Over several years, successive price changes compound, so a cumulative increase and an equivalent compound annual rate are different quantities.

Price growth also differs from the loss of purchasing power on unchanged cash. In a hypothetical doubling of prices, a basket previously costing $100 costs $200, while an unchanged $100 buys half as much. Prices have risen 100%, but the cash has lost 50% of its purchasing power.

The period and spending basket matter. Annual-average comparisons describe average prices across years, while monthly comparisons describe particular points within those years. A household spending unusually heavily on rent, fuel or medical care can experience a different inflation rate from the national average. CPI adjustment therefore provides a common benchmark for historical comparisons, rather than an exact measure of every household's living costs.

How to Use This Tool:

Use an amount denominated in US dollars and identify the year it belongs to. For a salary or budget comparison, keep the time basis consistent, such as annual salary in both years.

  1. Enter the original Amount as a number without commas or a currency symbol. The accepted range is $0 to $1 trillion, including both limits and fractional dollars.
  2. Choose the Source year and Target year from 1913 to 2025. An earlier target year converts the amount backward. The equivalent updates automatically as valid inputs change.
    If Check the amount and years appears, correct the required input named in the message to restore the result.
  3. Open Advanced when you have an actual target-year salary, price or budget to compare. Enter it in Comparison amount in target year, or leave that field blank to omit the comparison. Read its buying power, dollar gap and real percentage change in Purchasing power.
    The comparison uses the same monetary range. A rejected comparison can be corrected or cleared without losing a valid main result.

Interpreting Results:

Equivalent buying power is the target-year amount needed to match the source amount under CPI. A salary or budget above that benchmark has greater purchasing power against the CPI basket. An actual product price above the benchmark represents a higher cost relative to general consumer prices. An exact zero gap means the actual amount matches the benchmark. A displayed $0.00 gap can conceal a small difference because dollars are rounded to cents.

  • Cumulative price change, selected direction describes the total index change from source to target. A backward conversion can show a negative percentage even when prices rose over chronological time.
  • Unchanged cash: buying-power change describes the change in what the same nominal dollars can buy. A negative value means reduced purchasing power.
  • Historical annualized price growth is the constant compound rate connecting the earlier and later annual indexes. Reversing the selected years preserves this chronological rate. Individual years can have very different inflation rates.

Annual cost path and Annual observations run in chronological order, including both selected years. Each equivalent remains anchored to the original source amount. The table's Price change from source (%) is cumulative from that source year, not the change from the preceding row. Before comparing these results with another inflation figure, check that both use the same CPI series and annual-average periods.

Technical Details:

The annual indexes are CPI-U, all items, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted. Their reference base is 1982–1984 = 100. This sets the scale of the index; it is not a dollar price or a percentage inflation rate. A ratio of two indexes on the same scale gives the change in the price level between their periods.

Formula Core

Divide the target index by the source index to obtain the price multiplier. Multiplying the original amount by that ratio gives the equivalent target-year amount and the nominal difference from the original amount.

R=CtCs E=A×R Equivalent minus source amount=A×(R−1)

The symbols below keep the monetary amounts, price indexes and year interval distinct.

Symbol Meaning Unit
A Original Amount in the Source year Source-year USD
Cs, Ct Annual CPI in the source and target years Index, 1982–1984 = 100
R Target CPI divided by source CPI Multiplier
E Equivalent amount in the target year Target-year USD
n Target year minus source year, retaining its sign Years
X Actual Comparison amount in target year, when supplied Target-year USD

Price growth and unchanged cash

The cumulative percentage measures the increase or decrease in the cost of equivalent purchasing power. Holding the dollar amount unchanged uses the reciprocal of the same price multiplier.

Price change (%)=100×(R−1) Cash buying-power change (%)=100×(1R−1)

Historical annualized change

A compound annual rate expresses the endpoint change as an equal rate per year. For different years, the signed interval n produces the chronological earlier-to-later rate in either conversion direction.

Annualized change (%/year)=100×(R1n−1)

Reversing the years inverts the ratio and changes the sign of the exponent, leaving the annualized rate unchanged. The year interval is the difference between the year numbers, so 2000 to 2025 spans 25 years. This geometric rate is neither the cumulative percentage divided by 25 nor an arithmetic average of yearly inflation rates, and it does not predict future inflation.

For $100 in 2000, the published annual indexes are 172.200 for 2000 and 321.943 for 2025. Substituting those values gives the equivalent in 2025 dollars.

E=100×321.943172.200≈186.96USD

The same indexes give 86.96% cumulative price growth, a 46.51% loss of purchasing power for unchanged cash, and 2.53% historical annualized price growth. All three describe the same period, using different denominators or time scales.

Comparing an actual salary, price or budget

An actual target-year amount can be converted back to source-year purchasing power. Its gap from the equivalent is measured in target-year dollars. For a positive equivalent amount, the real percentage change compares the actual amount with that equivalent.

Source-year buying power=XR Target-year dollar gap=X−E Real change (%)=100×(XE−1)

The real percentage uses division by the inflation-adjusted benchmark. Subtracting the inflation percentage from a nominal salary increase is only an approximation and can give a different answer.

Same-year and zero-amount cases

Price-index changes can remain meaningful when a monetary percentage cannot be calculated. These cases determine which results are available.

Condition Result
Source and target are the same year The equivalent equals the original amount. Cumulative price change and unchanged-cash change are 0%. Annualized growth is not applicable because no years have elapsed.
Original amount is $0 The equivalent and dollar difference are $0. Cumulative price change and unchanged-cash change remain available, as does annualized growth when the years differ. An actual comparison retains its buying power and dollar gap, but a real percentage change from a zero base is undefined.
Actual comparison is blank No actual-amount comparison is included. The primary CPI adjustment is unchanged.
Actual comparison is $0 and the equivalent is positive Actual purchasing power is $0 and the real change is −100%. Entering zero is different from leaving the optional field blank.

Precision and very small amounts

Dollar amounts and percentages display two decimal places, annual CPI values three, and the ratio six. Calculations use the stored index values and the calculated ratio before display rounding. Each intervening year's equivalent is calculated directly from that year's CPI and the original source CPI, without compounding rounded annual percentages. The $1 trillion limit applies to entered amounts; an adjusted result can exceed it.

Arithmetic has finite floating-point precision. A nonzero input too small to remain nonzero is rejected. Representable tiny amounts are accepted, although subsequent arithmetic or rounding to cents can make a result zero. Negative nonzero amounts are rejected even at these very small scales; mathematical signed zero is treated as zero.

An extremely small equivalent can make the optional real percentage change impossible to represent as a finite number. In that case, the percentage is unavailable while the valid primary result and finite comparison buying-power and dollar-gap amounts remain available.

Data and Privacy Notes:

The calculator contains 113 published annual CPI observations from 1913 to 2025, retrieved from BLS on October 29, 2026. This is a fixed historical snapshot. It does not fetch fresh CPI data during a calculation, provide a 2026 annual estimate or forecast future years.

  • The published 2025 annual index is 321.943. BLS calculated it from 11 published monthly indexes because October 2025 CPI survey data were not collected during the federal government shutdown. October is omitted from this annual average; no replacement month is invented. Other ordinary annual averages use 12 monthly indexes, so the 2025 coverage differs.
  • These are annual-average comparisons, which can differ from December-to-December or other monthly comparisons. The scope is US consumer prices in USD. Currency exchange, investment returns, interest and personal income taxes are not calculated.
  • Calculations run in the browser using the supplied historical data. Opening the chart can require a network connection to load its display resource. Entered amounts and years can be retained in the page address, so sharing that address can also share those inputs.
  • CSV retains calculated numbers before display rounding, subject to the same numeric precision limits. DOCX reports use formatted display values.

These comparisons are educational estimates, not financial advice.

Worked Examples:

These illustrative amounts use the published historical indexes; they are not observations of a particular person's salary or purchases.

A pay rise that trails prices

Enter $50,000 with 2020 as the source year and 2025 as the target, then enter an actual annual salary of $60,000 in the optional comparison. The equivalent salary is $62,196.54. Although the nominal salary rose 20%, consumer prices rose 24.39%, leaving the actual salary $2,196.54 below the equivalent. Its buying power is $48,234.19 in 2020 dollars, a real decrease of 3.53%. The equivalent identifies the salary needed to match the original CPI-based purchasing power before personal tax or spending differences.

A period of falling prices

Enter $100 with 1920 as the source year and 1922 as the target. Annual CPI falls from 20.0 to 16.8, producing an equivalent of $84.00 and cumulative price change of −16.00%. Unchanged cash gains 19.05% in purchasing power, while historical annualized price growth is −8.35%. Because the target is later than the source, the negative price change describes historical deflation; checking the year order distinguishes this from a backward conversion.

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