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I’ve yet to see an ‘adjusted for inflation’ that coincides with the actual costs of the different eras.
In 1960, $1 million would get you a Beverly Hills mansion, a fleet of cars, a Manhattan townhouse, and you’d have enough left over to live lavishly off the interest.
In 2025, $12 million will get you a fairly nice house.
That’s just because inflation is typically underestimated.
Regardless of how accurate that calculation is, keep in mind that this was not a typical minimum wage job. Kratchitt was in a office management/department head position. His subordinates git way less, most likely.
First off, $27,574 is $13.25 per hour, assuming the standard salary 40 hour weeks or $15.15 assuming hourly employee’s standard 35 hour work week. This got me thinking: if kingreggieisreal got simple division wrong, what else did they get wrong…
Keeping in mind that conversion rate records from the time are lacking, from what we can surmise, in 1843 (when this story took place), a week’s 15 shillings (£0.75) was worth about £110.90 today ($147.84 US). This would be about £5,766.8 per year ($7,688.76 US), or £2.77 per hour ($3.70 US) assuming 40-hour weeks, or £3.17 per hour ($4.22 US) assuming 35-hour weeks.
I’m not really sure what maths kingreggieisreal is using, but it seems flawed.
The calculator you linked to shows £110.90 as 1843 value of £1.
£0.75 would be £83.18
Methematics.
I grew up in America and the standard work week is a full 40, so there’s that. Can’t help you with the inflation adjustments though.
I’m up at fucking 4am talking about payroll math. Still neurotypical tho.
Makes me wonder how long ago that was posted on the twitters or whatever. If that post was from some time when the wage/CoL ratio was better, the math almost maths by thinking a shilling is a quarter instead of a nickle.
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.
Actually, the math you’re quoting is a bit misleading. Cratchit did earn 15 shillings a week, but converting that to modern U.S. dollars isn’t straightforward. Simple inflation calculations like “$530/week → $13.50/hr” ignore things like typical work hours in Victorian England (often far longer than 40/week) and changes in living standards. Some estimates put his pay closer to $21/hr if you assume a 40‑hour week, but realistically, accounting for actual hours worked, his effective hourly rate might be much lower. So comparing it directly to modern minimum wage isn’t really accurate.
…this seems to be posted about the time that people ask for charity…no causation…no correlation, until proven…Dickens depended on a weekly income for whores, booze and nightlife…his family, eh…
What are you even trying to say?
…never meet your heroes…
