Upon inception it was set at $0.25. It is now $7.25.
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’).
Might as well use the latest numbers for this comparison. Yes, inflation is still absolutely sucking us all dry.
This is if you actually believe CPI is a legitimate measure, despite the cost of all the big ticket expenses like housing, education, and healthcare increasing 5x or more above inflation.
inflation is still absolutely sucking us all dry.
However, as a side note, inflation is absolutely essential to keep the economy healthy. Most developed countries around the world have a goal of 2 percent inflation. US inflation is currently 3.7 percent before seasonal adjustments.
Edit: Wow. Lots of people here who need to retake Econ 101.
Just when boomers were young (8-23 yrs old) … totally tracks!
Looking at the linked graph, there’s a relatively clear plateau from ‘56 to ‘80 … basically from oldest boomers being age 11 to youngest boomers being age 20. I’m a little astonished at how well it lines up with the whole fucking generation. Literally all of them, from the beginning of their teens to the end of their teens (at least), enjoyed the best minimum wage of the modern age.
It also, interestingly, justifies the seperate categorisation of the Jones generation (born 1960-1966) who were the first to see the steady decline.
The article explains it pretty concisely. Basically the generation between boomers and gen x that tends to get overlooked.
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
I’m 40 and min wage where I was was $5.25/hr if I recall. (Non-tipped job, tipped jobs were lower.) A 1 bedroom in my area at the time was about $700. I remembering being SO damn confused as to why someone working 40 hours on min wage wouldn’t even pay for a 1 bedroom after taxes, much less utilities, car, food, etc. I redid the math over and over again, thinking I must be doing something wrong because school talked all about budgets and stuff…
…but no, school had just failed to tell me that min wage wouldn’t actually cover a real-world apartment in my area.
It was all particularly stressful to me because I was in foster care in a group home as a teen, and I did work and school at the same time and they were prepping for us to go live on our own…and no matter how I did the math, I couldn’t afford a real apartment on my own EVEN IF someone had been willing to rent to me w/out a co-signer.
If you lived in the US, your numbers (and your memory) are absolutely incorrect.
Editing to add info:
Assuming the previous commenter is actually 40 years old and lived in the US, the minimum wage would have either been $4.75 or $5.15 when they were 14 (not $3.25)…
In fact, minimum wage in the US has never been $3.25.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart
State minimums can be different for certain jobs, and certain jobs are exempt from minimum wage and have a lower set wage. Tipped workers are the ones everyone knows about, but farm workers and others are also exempt.
That in no way contradicts anything I said.
The person I was replying to never said they were exempt from minimum wage… They said what they misremembered the minimum wage to have been.
I’m almost 50. It was 3.25 when i started to work at 15.
In about 6 months i was 4.25
I’m about the same age as you and both of you guys are remembering incorrectly.
See my previous comment linked below…
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.
I’ve worked for a number of different companies since I was a teenager and first got a job. Without a doubt, the cheapest motherfuckers on the planet with the most squalid working conditions are the biggest companies I’ve worked for. I think part of the key to being a top corporation is being stingy as fuck.
Weirdly that’s been the opposite of my experience, got paid a lot(in local terms) for doing barely anything in an internship. Paid not well for a small business where I knew the owners, but I know why, which is that they basically recruited people who wouldn’t bother negotiating.
Can you name one? I don’t know a single person who actually makes minimum wage. Legit question.
I’m kind of shocked at this, you must be really wealthy and/or out of touch. I make minimum wage at my current job which is 13.65 an hour in the state of Colorado. I make less now than I ever have before at any other job and I spent thousands on a technical degree. Many people all over the country only make minimum wage. Bartenders and jobs like that come to mind, they are often paid $2 or less an hour with “tips” that add up to minimum wage.
Not wealthy nor in a wealthy area but I live in a pretty densely populated state so I just don’t see it. Even convenience store jobs pay $18-20/hr here.
I’ve been working since 14 and that may have been the only year I made the minimum wage too. I don’t generally look at this sort of data so thank you for sharing your anecdotes!
Just means you’re not poor. I know loads, and they’re all in the poorest part of the country.
Dollar General, McDonald’s, Krogers, 7-11 just to name a few that you’d recognize. Used to be Walmart but they upped pay a couple of years ago.
Maybe it’s a regional thing then, those types of jobs in my area all earn more than the federal minimum wage and even the stage minimum which is $15/hr now.
That said, aside from DG, those other companies are franchise operations. Still, thank you for honestly answering and not just resorting to name calling.
I no longer work there but in the last year I worked for a “leading global source for education materials” according to Forbes, worth 2.8 billion and I was paid minimum wage as a retail employee.
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.
I don’t see how someone on minimum wage can even make ends meet in a lot of places. I live in the boonies and rent in my area is stupid, never mind what they’re asking in the city.
They don’t you cannot rent a 1 bedroom apartment on minimum wage in most if not all of America G Z is getting ducked harder than millennials with no end in sight. If you can afford rent you can’t afford luxuries such as healthier foods or decent health care (which ends up costing more in the fire when things go wrong). The inequality of wealth disbursement is the in the US “In the first quarter of 2023, 69 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.4 percent of the total wealth.Jul 17, 2023”. I’m very ecstatic that unions are coming back with force and people are fighting back, but it won’t be won overnight and the 1% are going to kick and claw and fight anyways they can ( look at Amazon using the Pinkertons to union bust). I think things can change, but it’s going to take a massive push on voting for people who actually represent the people and holding our politicians to a higher standard than we are now. Changing legislation such as, putting a limit on campaign donations and having a public ledger of where and who the donations came from (see you matter dark money!), repealing citizens united, getting rid of corporate welfare, extending voting rights (making it a national holiday to force businesses to make sure there is time off for their workers to vote while being compensated, and making sure employers no longer have a say in your healthcare (through universal healthcare) and end the privatization of the whole system, fixing the unchecked police system here would go a long way to making sure that those protesting would not be killed or beaten for exercising their first amendment right and would help us get in the right track to help mitigate climate change instead of the misinformation factory that is the oil and gas industry not to mention the disinformation machine that is alt right driven hate speech (looking at you Fox News for giving a breeding ground for that shit for bowers and Rudolf Murdock that with his media empire has done more to fuck humanity over than anyone is history). I do believe in gen z helping to change things for the better, but they can’t do it alone and it seems like the generations before them have given into apathy and and frozen into inaction by just straight death session and despair about the future.
Just realized I went on a long ass rant, my bad and did not mean to word vomit on you O agree with everything you said . I’ll delete if it gets into the negatives.
i live in the boonies, too. rent used to be reasonable for what i got (a shitty little walk up). it has now more than doubled in three years. all by a new building owner. over the twenty years previous (and three other owners), it went up a whole one time for about 10%.
rents used to be reasonable and stable in this little town, but not anymore. buildings like this are even being pulled off the residential market completely and turned into short-term rentals (they can charge more for a single 3-day weekend rental than they can for a whole month on a residential lease).
