2y ago

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

Upon inception it was set at $0.25. It is now $7.25.

182 comments

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.
- Meanwhile the cost of living has increased 2077% in 85 years.
  
  CYBERPUNK REFERENCE??!??!
- Wow! That's almost as much as a CEO increases in 3 months!
- Thanks for making me chuckle.

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.
- federal Minimum wage when you were 14, was 5.15 an hour, assuming you are actually 40. It was 2.13 an hour if you were in a tipped position. But it was not 3.25.
- Jesus. I'm your age, but my starting minimum wage was $6.50. I thought I was ballin a few years later when I was making $9

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.
- Do you have a source on that nationally? Because that is very very high in many areas.
  
  Well,
  If it kept line with productivity Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
  If it kept up with inflation Advocates say minimum wage needs to be higher before it’s indexed to inflation or https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/minimum-wage-inflation-productivity/index.html
  These sources disagree among themselves if the right number is $21.45 or $26 or $20, they seem to base their analysis on productivity or inflation
  Yeah, these numbers sound like a lot in some places, but those places where it 'sounds like a lot' tend to be really fucking poorer than necessary. It would hurt them not at all to have the minimum keep up with where it was in 1968 instead of being the output of both major parties in congress agreeing to fuck the working poor

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.
  
  Saving $50 per employee when you have 5 employees is $250. It's nice, but not a game changer. 50 employees: $2,500, 500 employees: $25,000. When you have more employees squeezing pennies out of your workers becomes a relevant boon to the company.
  
  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.
  
  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.

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.

Federal min wage, many state minimum wages are more than that
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state
- And many municipalities even higher than many of those high state minimum wages.
  
  Then you have NC. NC's state gov does everything it can to restrict local govs. It is even banning cities from regulating single use plastic bags.
- Additionally just because that is the minimum wage doesn't mean people are getting payed that. I live in a state where we just used the fed minimum, and see McDonald's advertising $17/hr. That's still a pretty humble rate but the labor market dictates wages not the government.

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.
- Pennsylvania is $7.25 lol.
- California's is actually even weirder, because they recently passed legislation that raises the minimum wage but specifically on franchised businesses
  
  I think that got held up in lobbyists appealing to the court.
  
  Berkeley's minimum wage is $18.07

Could be worse. 25 cents in 1938 is still only worth $5.44 today.
- 2 dollars of progress for 85 years... How much has productivity risen during that time?
  
  People working for minimal wage don't produce more value. Considering advancements in mechanisation and automation over these years, their productivity has actually decreased.
- Listen here you little shit we're here for class solidarity and memes not mathematics

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
- To be fair that's like 12 USD which would still require tipping. Also not sure if Canada has the same minimum wage exception for tip workers where they're allowed to be paid significantly less than minimum wage so long as tips make up the difference. In the US it's very typical for tip workers to only be paid 2-3 dollars an hour.
- Going up to $14.00 on 1 October in Saskatchewan. Like the USA we have different labour laws in each province. We also get 3 weeks vacation to start, unlike the 2 weeks BC and Ontario get.

I agree it needs to be raised but that's a terrible and misleading way to present the data.
- I strongly agree with this comment.
  You could as easily say it's increased by 2800% (correct me if I'm wrong) since then, which sends the opposite message, but neither are good ways of showing what's really going on...

Why do people even live in the US?
- You write that as if moving to a new country is just that easy.
  If you're in Europe and have never visited, you might be surprised at just how huge the US is. That, plus having only two adjacent countries, makes leaving very difficult.
  Oh yeah, plus you have to get into another country, most of which aren't super welcoming to immigrants, either.
  
  Their instance implies they're Australian which is similar in size to the US, and also further away from most other countries.
  You are right that it's difficult for many people to move country though.
  
  You can leave to any country that's not adjacent to the US. I'm really not getting what point you're trying to make with that statement?
  The rest is still valid, but this part is a bit of a moot point. Most countries are welcoming of sufficiently skilled immigrants as well - though the US education system with its ridiculous pricing might be a deterrent here.
- 💀
- Difficult to escape.
- It's a pretty nice country, it's got a little bit of everything. It has flaws, and as Americans we complain about them and try to get them fixed to constantly improve it.
  I think a lot of the images of America being so bad comes from our overwhelming volume online.
  
  The immigration system is kinda broken that some people had to emigrate to Canada instead.
  
  Canada thought you were shit long before the internet
  It’s a big reason for our historical loyalty to the crown
- They don't make it easy to get out.
- Stuck.. who would want us? Every country I'd like to live in would require me to be very rich or have a usable skill set. While I have the latter it also needs to be provable which is difficult.
  I should have bolted when I was younger but i just didn't have the knowledge.
  
  Also remember the student loan crisis in the US, so going to a college, university, or trade school is simply not a viable option for many of the most vulnerable and neediest of folks in the US, especially when they are already working during HS to help support their family.
  The working classes in the USA really do have the deck actively stacked against them, and something needs to change or we as a nation are completely fucked.
- It's where I keep the bodies
- Well obviously it's very difficult for the poor to leave and if you aren't poor it's actually a pretty nice place to live.

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.
- Was going to ask, did op include inflation?

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

$7 or 800%
- The best (fairest) way to express it would be in terms of average percent per year for x years. If that matches inflation, then everything is just status quo in some sense.
  
  Hm. That wouldn't correct any established injustice.

bUt fReE mArKeT gOod
- But that has nothing to do with free market because minimum wage is set by the government?
  
  Minimum wage is required because companies operating in the free market don't pay many people enough to survive. So minimum wage is absolutely related to the free market.

Obligatory GTA 5 “This is 7 dollars” meme
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Obligatory GTA 5 “This is 7 dollars” meme
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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').
- 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.

And we are in by far the longest stretch of no increase. Thanks biden and democrats.
- Lmao Biden and the Democrats? Are you high? Part of Bidens covid relief bill included a $15 minimum wage. It was struck out of the bill by a vote of 58-42. A grand total of 7(well, 6, since Sinema isn't a Dem anymore and never really was) democrats voted against it. EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted against it.
  Now tell me, why is it "Biden and the Democrats" fault when they actually try to improve things but fail(even if the 6/7 nay dems had voted yeah, that's still at best 49 yeahs), but never Republicans fault when they actually DO vote in lockstep to prevent any democrat endorsed legislation from passing, and when a significant percentage of them are actively trying to strip rights away from people?
  Oh, I forgot to mention; while Biden doesn't have the executive power to unilaterally raise the national minimum wage, he DOES have the power to raise the minimum wage for employees of the federal government, which... he did.
  
  Oh right, that time we learned the senate parliamentarian exists. The convenient scapegoat for why dems failed again.
  Republicans are shit, but republicans lost. This was a wholy dem controlled government, theres no one left to blame but dems.

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.
- If you’re only making $20/hour after a college education, your college education is a broken promise.
  
  This is the correct take. Unfortunately, there seems to be an overwhelming sense of "fuck you, I got mine" amongst a lot of people meaning they'd rather kick other people down than get pushed up.
- Your right. Wages should be going up across the board, not just for fast food workers.

Only? That's 29x more. Needs context.
- This kind of context?
  $1 in 1938 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $21.77 today, an increase of $20.77 over 85 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.69% per year between 1938 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 2,077.49%.
  Minimum wage workers today have less purchasing power than they did in the Great Depression
  
  If $1 then is now equivalent to $21.77, then that $0.25 minimum wage then would today only be $5.44 (25% of $21.77). $7.25 represents 133% more purchasing power.
  
  Why are you comparing $1 to $0.25? This is an incorrect way to compare relative purchasing power.
  As already pointed out, if $1 in 1938 is equivalent to $21.77 today, then $0.25 in 1938 is equivalent to $5.44 today ($21.76 / 4). Since minimum wage is $7.25, they are earning more per hour now after adjusting for inflation.
  Another way to think about it is if someone wanted to buy something for $1 in 1938, they'd need 4 hours of minimum wage work ($1 / $0.25 = 4 hrs). That same $1 expense would be $21.77 today, or $21.77/7.25 = 3.0 hours of minimum wage work.
  This isn't necessarily justification that the minimum wage isn't in need of an increase today, by the way. I personally think it needs an increase (among other work reforms) and is a decent argument that minimum wage in the US has been too low since it's inception. But it has increased since 1938 after adjusting for inflation.
  
  I meant to say 7$ doesn't mean much. It's like saying company share price went up by 7$, that's why stock market changes are expressed in % not in $.
  
  I think some of you are conflating inflation and price increases. Inflation is the decrease in the value of money. Price increases are increases in the cost of commodities. I know that sounds a little pedantic, but while inflation can cause price increases, so can other things (things like taxes or monopolies). If the cost of living were locked to inflation, then yes, you'd see a 33% increase in the value of minimum wage. As an example, a 2 bedroom house was around $3900 in 1938. If you made minimum wage, then a house costs about 4 years' worth of labor. It's harder to get stats like that today because it varies so much by region... but I live in a pretty low cost-of-living state, and the median cost of a 2 bedroom house here is around $240k. Minimum wage today will earn you about $15k annually, meaning a house now costs 16 years' worth of labor.

And you ungrateful shits keep clamoring for more
- Who gave a walking prolapsed anus internet access?
  
  Look all you gotta do is grab a warm, moist towel and shove it back up there
  Ask me how I know

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?
- Because an employer paying minimum wage is their way of saying “I’d pay you less if it were legal”, because your employer’s interests are in direct competition with your own. A store manager is not only in direct competition with the store across the street, he is also in competition with his own employees. It is in his interest to ensure he maximizes his own profits, but it is in your interest to make as much money as you can aswell.
  
  The focus should be on "Id pay you less but then you would quit”. Everything else is a weak position.
  If there is no competition among stores, workers compete among each other. Though nobody complains because it's the weakest humans who won't find a minimum wage job. When there is a choice for the manager, they will pick the better worker.
  Is it still a good deal for minimum wage workers? What should workers do with abusive managers? With minimum wage, there is no option to be willing to work for less but with better conditions.
- The unemployment rate does not take into consideration people who are under-employed or people who are working multiple jobs to get by. You could be working 3 part time jobs (none of which offer benefits) and still not make enough money to pay your bills. The "unemployment rate" is a load of bullshit and should largely be discarded in favor of tracking how many people are living above the poverty line.
  
  Right. This is important to remember. I think my question is still valid because it's about the real rate and not the published figure.
- If worker unions were required by law then I would agree. The issue is that companies will corner the job market to suppress wages. The government applies some pressure the opposite way via minimum wages to help force progress. Self checkouts and various other automated processes don't occur without some kind of selection pressure.
  Think of minimum wages as forcing weaker companies out of the market.
  
  How do companies corner the job market?
  Doesn't minimum wage support the cornering because new competitors cannot start with lower wages?

Alternatively, 29x the original
- Why are you booing him, he's right

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.
- All the blue team cares about is the mean thing someone said the other day
  Tribalistic nonsense. I assume you're referring to the Democratic party?
  Wondering where you're getting that stereotype from? Do you think believing it's a problem that trans people exist is just, "saying a mean thing"?
  "Both sides"-ism aside, if you're gonna do it, you should at least be honest about the things each side are currently focused on and what their platform is...
  The equivocation goes away pretty quickly when we're honest to ourselves about the differences between parties. Usually that's intentional, and the entire point is to minimize the absolutely insane fascist, anti-democracy priorities of current American conservatives. I understand that, but...
  Ever stop for a moment to think that maybe, if you're that embarrassed about the things the party you identify with are saying/doing, that you can't even be honest to yourself about the levels of insanity they're reaching, then maybe it's time to take a step back and think about what you're so vocally supporting.
  
  Bla bla bla, people exist that don't like either party. Get over it.

Yes any for most of the time it was sufficient
- Hasn't been sufficient for 40+ years.
- Ah survivorship bias.

182 comments