TIL Minimum wage has only increased by $7.00 in 85 years in the USA.

inflation-adusted, the federal minimum wage peaked way tf back in february 1968 at $1.60 an hour (equal to $13.46 in '2022 dollars').

There are lies, damn lies, and then there's statistics.

Im not here to say the minimum wage doesnt need to be raised, because it does, but another way of putting that is

"The minimim wage has increased 1500% in 85 years."

That sounds a lot better even though its the same thing.

When I turned 14, I started working for $3.75 an hour. Minimum wage was $3.25 and I felt damn lucky.

I’m 40

If you do the comparisons in normalized dollars and compare to productivity, minimum wage (if it tracked to the same purchasing power as it did in the 1950s) would be somewhere around $26 in today's dollars. If you do the same but track to inflation, it would be about $22.

When the wage doesn't keep track to inflation, it's not 'increasing', it's a pay cut. When it doesn't track to productivity, it's a pay cut out of labor's part of any growth.

When workers earning suppressed wages compete to buy things like housing, they're bidding against the class of people that received the share of productivity they didn't- and when the folks making more bid up prices of those things, it's a double-whammy of foregone wage + increased cost-of-living.

Minimum wage here where I am is going to $15.30 oct 1st (Canuck bucks) and I don't think it's enough considering how expensive things are nowadays.

Minimum wage is simply the lowest full time salary a company can legally get away with paying. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm primarily talking about large corporations that make millions and billions, yet claim they can't afford to pay more than minimum wage.

Federal min wage, many state minimum wages are more than that

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state

It should be noted that this is the federal minimum wage. Many states set a higher minimum wage than that. For example, California's minimum wage will be $16/hr starting January 1st, Virginia is $12/hr, and New York is $14.20/hr.

Could be worse. 25 cents in 1938 is still only worth $5.44 today.

Meanwhile in Canada minimum wage is at $16.55 starting Oct 1st.

Though I don't understand how the tipping culter is essential the same between the US and Canada

I agree it needs to be raised but that's a terrible and misleading way to present the data.

The development of cheaper manufacturing methods has been hiding the decline for quite some time now.

I think a more alarming stat is that, due to inflation, minimum wage workers have received a pay cut every year for the last fourteen years.

Why do people even live in the US?

The minimum wage has always been and always will be zero.

$7 or 800%

Obligatory GTA 5 “This is 7 dollars” meme

bUt fReE mArKeT gOod

In California, fast food workers wages will go up to $20 an hour we found today. That's more than some college educated people make. Something is wrong here.

Only? That's 29x more. Needs context.

And you ungrateful shits keep clamoring for more

Do you remember that wages rose when unemployment was low?

Why is there a need for minimum wage?

Edit: downvoters, what do you want? A high minimum wage job while many are unemployed? Why focus on minimum wage when you can have low unemployment and decent wages for everybody at the same time by reducing unemployment?

Alternatively, 29x the original

All the blue team cares about is the mean thing someone said the other day. All the red team cares about is guns and abortion.

So.. in a way... everything's working as intended, as depressing as it is to consider that thought.

And we are in by far the longest stretch of no increase. Thanks biden and democrats.

Yes any for most of the time it was sufficient