I hear someone comment saying 'If minimum wage kept up with inflation, we wouldn't have this problem!' and it made me curious; what would an inflation indexed minimum wage actually be?
Since there's myriads of information on this subject available online, along with tons of statistics regarding historical inflation rates, I decided to sit down and do the math.
The result is this handy chart:
As we can see by the results, the US Minimum wage of $7.25 is currently beating an inflation indexed wage by $1.94, or approximately 26.78%.
Canada, however, has a federal minimum wage trailing inflation by $1.75 or approximately 18.9%, but this amount is irrelevant though as every single province and territory has enacted a wage minimum of at least $10.50, which surpasses an inflation adjusted wage by $1.25 or 11.93%. Most provinces are much higher than this, but since even the lowest surpasses the inflation indexed wage, it's a moot point to bother with the higher values.
If anyone is interested in the raw data, it can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/809z7z6s06zzm0s/Data.pdf?dl=0
While I understand peoples desire for a higher wage (who doesn't like more money for doing the same job?), the argument that wages haven't kept up with inflation is a very wrong one given the data presented.
