Inflation calculator
What is $10,000 from 1978 worth today?
The answer
$51,652
in September 2026 dollars
$10,000 in 1978 buys about as much as $51,652 in September 2026.
- Prices are 5.2 times as high as in 1978: they have risen 417%.
- That's an average inflation rate of 3.5% a year.
- It takes $5.17 in September 2026 to buy what $1 bought in 1978, and $1 today buys what $0.19 did then.
Then vs. now
- Rent: 6.5 times as high in September 2026 as in 1978, while all prices are 5.2 times as high. See the chart
Each figure comes from its chart's source: the year's average price in dollars of the day, and what that is in today's dollars. Rent is BLS's index of what the same homes rent for, so it shows how much rents rose, not the average rent.
Share or cite this answer
Cite as: “$10,000 in 1978 buys about as much as $51,652 in September 2026.” Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index (CPI-U, all items), via Chartly (https://chart.ly/inflation-calculator/10000-dollars-in-1978), data as of September 30, 2026.
Try another amount or year
Source and date
- Data as of
- The numbers
- Consumer prices since 1913
The calculator uses the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), which BLS has measured every month since 1913. A year's prices are the average of its months (for 2026, the months so far), and today's are those of September 2026, the newest month BLS has published. The index tracks what city households pay for a typical basket of goods and services, so any one thing you buy may have risen faster or slower. It updates itself when BLS publishes a new month.