EDIT: Brain went and did 52 months not weeks… wild… sorry, fixed it.
Edit 2: Just a note my calculations are only directly based off consumer price index based inflation, which does not take a lot of things into account. There are other ways to value inflation, which they could have been using.
And according to the Bureau of Labor (and some other sources) the median hourly wage in the US for non-supervisory (eg non-exempt) workers is around $34/hr.
The average (mean) is $36.67.
Of course these are heavily influenced by high COL areas, but if you lookup distributions, most people fall in the $24-$35 area of the curve, with only the 10th percentile making under $15. That suggests there aren’t many jobs paying that kind of money (or the distribution would look different), and that 90% of jobs pay above $15, with 80% paying above $20.
https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html says in 1843 apparently 1 shilling was about 24 cents (1 pound=$4.79 and 20 shillings=1 pound so divided by 20 to get it), so 24*15 is $3.60. Adjusted for inflation using https://www.mortgagecalculator.org/calcs/inflation.php for 1843 to 2022, then https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ for 2022 to 2025, and I end with 155.69 a week, or $8095.88 a year or $3.89/hr assuming a 40hr work week.
EDIT: Brain went and did 52 months not weeks… wild… sorry, fixed it.
Edit 2: Just a note my calculations are only directly based off consumer price index based inflation, which does not take a lot of things into account. There are other ways to value inflation, which they could have been using.
And according to the Bureau of Labor (and some other sources) the median hourly wage in the US for non-supervisory (eg non-exempt) workers is around $34/hr.
The average (mean) is $36.67.
Of course these are heavily influenced by high COL areas, but if you lookup distributions, most people fall in the $24-$35 area of the curve, with only the 10th percentile making under $15. That suggests there aren’t many jobs paying that kind of money (or the distribution would look different), and that 90% of jobs pay above $15, with 80% paying above $20.