Time to earn
Prices only matter next to paychecks. Here the unit of account is an hour of work: how long someone on the federal minimum wage, or on average hourly earnings, worked for one item.
How long you worked for one Big Mac 🍔
Federal minimum wage
1985
27 min
$3.35/h buys 2.18 Big Macs
2026
51 min
$7.25/h buys 1.18 Big Macs
Average hourly earnings
1985
11 min
$8.73/h buys 5.69 Big Macs
2026
11 min
$32.20/h buys 5.22 Big Macs
Minutes of pre-tax work at the stated hourly wage. Minimum wage is the federal floor; many states are higher. Earnings are for production and nonsupervisory workers.
Big Macs per hour of work, 1967–2026
How many you could buy with one hour's pre-tax pay. A rising line means the Big Mac got cheaper relative to wages.
At federal minimum wage At average hourly earnings dashed = interpolated between documented yearsclick the chart to pick a year
Median household income, in Big Macs per year
The Big Mac as a unit of account: the median U.S. household's pre-tax income divided by that year's Big Mac price. The most recent year carries the latest Census figure forward.
dashed = interpolated between documented yearsclick the chart to pick a year