When adjusted for inflation (and expressed in constant 2019 monies), the average price of US residential electricity fell from $4.81 per kilowatt-hour in 1902 (the first year for which the national mean is available) to 30.5 cents in 1950, then to 12.2 cents in 2000; and in early 2019 it was just marginally higher, at 12.7 cents/kWh. This represents a relative decline of more than 97 percent—or, stated in reverse, a dollar now buys nearly 38 times more electricity than it did in 1902. But, during that period, average (again, inflation-adjusted) manufacturing wages nearly sextupled, which means
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