Back in 1973, the average hourly wage in this country was $4.03 an hour. I did a little calculation that we economists do to take a look at what you could get for $4.03 an hour in 1973 and then adjusted it to 2018 – the last year that we have numbers for. How much money would you need per hour in 2018 to be able to buy the same bundle of goods that you could buy for $4.03 in 1973? You’d need an average of $23.68 an hour. An average wage of $23.68 would be what you’d need for a worker to be able to buy, on average, as much today as he or she could with the average hourly pay in 1973.
