Inflation vs. Unemployment
This chart plots annual U.S. CPI inflation against unemployment and groups each year by decade. It averages monthly BLS series from complete calendar years beginning in 1949. This is a modern price-inflation variant: Phillips’s original 1958 study examined British money-wage changes, and the relationship does not hold other economic forces constant.
The original idea: Lower unemployment was associated with faster money-wage growth in Phillips's historical British data. Read the original ↗ · Plain-language overview ↗
What does it show?
Inflation and unemployment do not form one stable relationship across decades.
Methodology
For each complete calendar year from 1949, averages the twelve monthly seasonally adjusted U-3 unemployment rates (FRED UNRATE) and the twelve year-over-year percentage changes in the seasonally adjusted CPI-U all-items index (FRED CPIAUCSL). Each point is one year and colors group observations by decade. This is the modern price-inflation version of the Phillips Curve; A. W. Phillips's 1958 paper studied U.K. money-wage changes, not U.S. CPI inflation. The chart is descriptive and does not hold inflation expectations, supply shocks, productivity, or labor-market composition constant.