$9.00 per hour! Why when I was a kid walking to school up hill both ways in the snow we only made $0.23 per hour and an hour lasted ten times longer than it does now. Can you believe these whippersnappers wanting to get $9.00 per hour?
Or, how exactly does California’s newly passed $9.00 per hour minimum wage, the highest state minimum in the nation, compare in constant dollars to the minimum wage when your grandpappy was only knee high to a grasshopper? Let this handy chart explain it to you.
Here you have the federal minimum wage for each year from 1955 to present, with one added data point, the $9.00 California minimum added on at the far right. The green line is measured in constant 1996 dollars and the red line are the dollars at the time that the wage was in effect, non-adjusted.
That $6.04 in 1996 constant dollars brings us back to the very bottom end of glory days known as 1961 to 1979. Though much of the 1960s were much higher, even the economically weak 1970s were mostly higher than that.
California isn’t done with the hikes at $9.00 which goes into effect in June 2014; in 2016 the state minimum will go to $10.00 per hour. Though some California cities are already at $10.00.
Congratulations minimum wage earners, your constant dollar wages are 50% higher than those poor bastards from 2004 who were at the very bottom of the chart.
The chart is an artisinal creation that was hand crafted by the author in Excel. Wage Data: Infoplease
