Per kilowatt-hour · US city average · all available data
A kilowatt-hour of electricity vs. official inflation, 1941–2025
Indexed: 1979 = 100, the year all three series converge · Three lines, three measures of inflation: what consumers actually paid (retail), the BLS CPI subindex for this category, and overall CPI-U All Items
Reading the chart. The retail dollar series tracks the average residential electricity rate paid by households in dollars per kilowatt-hour. The CPI subindex applies BLS adjustments to the same underlying data.