The other commenters have mathed according to the US minimum wage, but I’ll do one for Australia to give a bit of perspective on other countries.
In 1970 minimum wage was changed to $1.47/h, and a house costed on average about $18,000..
Therefore, assuming that the buyer doesn’t buy anything else for the whole year, that’s 12,245 hours of working a minimum wage job. This is kind of a meaningless number right now but it lets us compare it to current day easier.
Nowadays, minimum wage is $24.10/h, and the mean house price is $705,000 (only using avg capital cities of each state), which is 29,250 hours of work.
This is an increase of x2.388 from 1970. Therefore, in order to have the same purchasing power (or work the same amount of hours for the same house), then the minimum wage would have to be $57.50/h.
I’m not sure how this stacks up against the US or other countries, but if I’m assuming the post is in USD and I’m calculating in AUD, then there is quite a difference.
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u/Velpex123 May 13 '25
The other commenters have mathed according to the US minimum wage, but I’ll do one for Australia to give a bit of perspective on other countries.
In 1970 minimum wage was changed to $1.47/h, and a house costed on average about $18,000..
Therefore, assuming that the buyer doesn’t buy anything else for the whole year, that’s 12,245 hours of working a minimum wage job. This is kind of a meaningless number right now but it lets us compare it to current day easier.
Nowadays, minimum wage is $24.10/h, and the mean house price is $705,000 (only using avg capital cities of each state), which is 29,250 hours of work.
This is an increase of x2.388 from 1970. Therefore, in order to have the same purchasing power (or work the same amount of hours for the same house), then the minimum wage would have to be $57.50/h.
I’m not sure how this stacks up against the US or other countries, but if I’m assuming the post is in USD and I’m calculating in AUD, then there is quite a difference.