If you focus only on the blue bar in the chart below, it looks like the federal minimum hourly wage in the US has grown consistently since the late '40s. When inflation is taken into account, however, the data paints a very different — and far less pretty — picture.

Using figures from Federal Reserve Economic Data, the team at Forensic Economics Services charted the change in US federal minimum wages between 1947 and 2023, presenting the values both nominally and in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars.

As the graph shows, America's real minimum wage is 30 percent lower than it was in 2009. Though today's federal minimum hourly wage of $7.25 is the highest the country has seen in nominal terms, real minimum wages peaked in 1968, at more than $14 a hour in 2023 dollars.

Click image to enlarge

Via u/ForensicEconomics.