felzbug

This might be the wildest minimum wage statistic I've ever seen. In 1971, the federal minimum wage was $1.60 per hour. Gold averaged $40.92 per ounce. It took 26 hours of minimum-wage labor to earn an ounce of gold. In 2025, the federal minimum wage was $7.25. Gold averaged $3,432 per ounce. It took 473 hours of labor to earn that same ounce. Your hourly wage increased 4.5× in dollars. The amount of labor required to acquire gold increased 18.5×. Measured in gold, the federal minimum wage lost approximately 95% of its value. Fifty-four years of nominal wage increases, and one hour of work buys a fraction of the monetary asset it once did.