LA Cost of Living, 1940 to 2026

Los Angeles home values, rents, household income and minimum wage at six benchmarks from 1940 to 2026, in 2026 dollars.

Source

U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; U.S. DOL, SSA, California DIR, and the City of Los Angeles; Zillow

Updated

Aug. 13, 2026

Desk

Money

Terms

Free to download, no request and no account. License: Free with attribution.

What ships

6 benchmark years. CSV, column dictionary, licensing terms, SHA-256 manifest.

Files

• avg_prices_annual_la_us.csv58 KB, 671 rows
• cpi_annual_la_us.csv4 KB, 114 rows
• la_cost_of_living_geography_comparison.csv4 KB, 65 rows
• la_cost_of_living_panel.csv1 KB, 6 rows
• la_cost_of_living_sources.csv5 KB, 30 rows
• minimum_wage_history.csv11 KB, 82 rows

Download the zip15 KBMore datasets

The first rows of avg_prices_annual_la_us.csv

series_id	geography	item	unit	year	annual_avg_price_usd
APU0000702111	U.S. city average	bread, white, pan	per lb	1980	0.5088
APU0000702111	U.S. city average	bread, white, pan	per lb	1981	0.5252
APU0000702111	U.S. city average	bread, white, pan	per lb	1982	0.5322
APU0000702111	U.S. city average	bread, white, pan	per lb	1983	0.5416
APU0000702111	U.S. city average	bread, white, pan	per lb	1984	0.5412

6 of 8 columns shown.