Minimum Wage: Know Your Numbers

By Sean Cain

Hourly U.S. minimum wage in 2005 if it had risen at the same rate of CEO compensation since 1990: $23.03

Percentage of minimum wage workers in Canada who are nineteen years of age or older: 61

Percentage who are women: 64

Hourly minimum wage in Canada in 2006 if it had risen at the same rate of real GDP per capita since 1976: $12.44

Income for a full-time minimum wage worker in Ontario in 2004 as a percentage of the Low-Income Cut-Off (LICO): 64

Amount of time it would take a top Canadian executive to earn a full-time minimum wage worker's annual pay, in hours: 4

Amount of time it would take a full-time U.S. minimum wage worker to earn Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's annual pay, in years: 719

Amount of time it would take a minimum wage Disney worker in Haiti to earn company CEO Bob Iger's annual pay, in years: 39,903

Current hourly minimum wages in the United States and Australia, in U.S. dollars: $5.15, $10.43

Current unemployment rates in the same countries: 4.6%, 4.5%

Number of businesses in Britain who were fined in 2006 for not properly paying employees the minimum wage: 1,500

Average percentage of total revenues a major U.S. corporation used to pay its top five executives in 1995: 5

Average percentage in 2003: 10

Percentage change in real income of the poorest 10% of Canadian families from 1970 to 1999: - 28

Percentage change in real income of the richest 10% of Canadian families during the same period: +122