Currency · Updated with each Fed release · Figures to 21 Aug 2026
Is the Dollar losing value?
When you worry the dollar is "losing value", you're worrying about one of two different things. This is the one from the news - the dollar against other currencies: 1.8% weaker than a year ago, 9% below its record. (The other worry - what a dollar buys in the shops - is our inflation page.)
If the headlines have you half-convinced your money is quietly shrinking against the world, here's the measured version of that feeling: the Federal Reserve's broad dollar index, which weighs the dollar against the currencies of every economy America trades with - euros and yuan counting for more than francs - week by week since 2006. Feelings drift; this line is checkable.
So, what are we looking at, exactly?
An index, set to 100 in January 2006: above 100, the dollar buys more foreign currency than it did then; below, less. The line's big moves are the stories you half-remember - the slide into the 2008 crisis, the long climb through the 2010s, the 2022 spike when US interest rates jumped ahead of everyone else's. The record high is 130 (10 Jan 2025); the low is 86 (29 Apr 2011).
Where the dollar stands against a year ago
−1.8% weaker
Why is the dollar falling?
It's a complex system, and no single lever moves it on its own - anyone claiming the dollar's value is being driven by one thing doesn't have a broad enough view of macroeconomics. There are a few candidates, though, and the chart can't separate them by itself: interest rates (money flows toward better returns, so rate gaps between the US and everyone else pull the line), trade and tariff policy, and how much the world wants dollars as its safe asset in a nervous moment - a demand that has historically risen in crises. Take direction and scale from the chart, and the mechanism from the Fed's own notes on the index.
What does a weaker dollar mean for you?
A weaker dollar makes imports and foreign holidays dearer, which feeds gently into shop prices - and makes American goods cheaper for the rest of the world, which exporters cheer. Your savings didn't shrink at home; they shrank relative to abroad. Which is why "good for the dollar" and "good for you" aren't always the same sentence.
Five years ago the index stood at 114.5; today it's 118.1. Weeks make noise; half-decades make trends.
Calculated from the chart aboveWhat this chart can't tell you
This is the dollar against a trade-weighted basket - your holiday exchange rate against any single currency can tell a different story. It's nominal, so it says nothing about inflation at home (that's the inflation page's job). The headline figures are the latest daily close, while the chart plots weekly closes, so its right edge can trail the numbers above by a few days. And currencies move on expectations: the newest readings are the market's guess, permanently subject to revision by events.
Further reading
All of our numbers come from live, free sources - the Federal Reserve's broad dollar index via FRED, published daily (we chart the weekly closes). Every figure on this page is calculated from that series, and the page updates as the data does.
If you want to dig deeper, the Fed's H.10 release explains exactly how the index is weighted, free.