Our reading of data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Spot an error? Tell us at hello@adatastory.com.
After inflation, getting a car repaired cost more in 2025 than in any year back to 1935, while a like-for-like new car cost less than in any year BLS has priced it. Repairs cost 22.8 times their 1950 price; new cars, 4.3 times. So where does the money go? Ninety years of prices, pay and jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Take $100 of car repairs in 1950. By the consumer price index for motor vehicle maintenance and repair, the same work cost $2,283 in 2025. Prices overall rose 13.36 times over those years, so $100 of 1950 shopping cost $1,336. New vehicles rose 4.33 times.
The new-vehicle index isn't the sticker price: it prices a like-for-like car and takes out the value of better equipment, such as airbags or more power. By that measure the same car got cheaper after inflation, and repairs went the other way. After inflation, repairs cost 70.9% more than in 1950 and new cars 67.6% less. Measured against the car itself, a repair became 5.27 times as dear.
BLS's index for motor vehicle parts and equipment, the tires, batteries, oil and other parts people buy for their own cars, starts in December 1977. From 1978 to 2025 they rose 2.38 times while prices overall rose 4.94 times: after inflation, 51.8% cheaper. Tires rose 2.02 times. Car repairs rose 6.44 times, 30.4% more than prices.
After inflation, parts were at their cheapest in 2020, and in 2025 they were only 0.3% above that. One caveat matters: the parts a shop fits aren't priced on their own. They're inside the repair price, with the labour, so this index can't say whether the parts in your repair bill got dearer. Step 7 looks inside one bill.
Since December 1997, BLS has split the repair bill into three: repair work other than body work and servicing, body work, such as crash repairs, and maintenance and servicing, such as oil changes. All three outran prices from 1998 to 2025: the repair work by 46.2%, body work by 22.1% and servicing by 19.2%. The parts people buy themselves fell 7.5% after inflation, tires 19.7% and new vehicles 37.0%.
The repair work cost 2.89 times as much in 2025 as in 1998. Of full years, body work was at its dearest, after inflation, in 2023.
If pay alone drove repair prices, the two would have risen together. They didn't. In 1990 production and nonsupervisory workers at automotive repair and maintenance businesses earned $9.14 an hour on average, 89.6% of the $10.20 earned across the private sector. In 2025 they earned $26.81, 85.5% of $31.35.
Their pay rose 2.93 times; the average worker's, 3.07 times. That slip partly reflects the mix: car washes grew from 15.0% of these jobs to 18.4%. At mechanical repair shops alone, pay rose from $9.55 to $29.81 an hour, 3.12 times, a little faster than the average worker's (93.6% of the average in 1990, 95.1% in 2025). Either way, the price of repairs rose more: 3.32 times. So pay rose a lot, and repair prices rose more. The figures are wages before benefits, for everyone at these businesses below supervisor level, mechanics included. After inflation, an hour of repair-shop pay rose 19.1%.