Topic
Real-wage stories. What nominal numbers hide when prices move faster than pay.
A 10-year review of inflation-adjusted minimum wages across 17 countries finds one country with a 71 percent real gain, one with a 24 percent real loss, and France sitting almost exactly where it started after six years of increases.
The €13.90 floor effective January 2026 is the largest single increase in the German statutory minimum's 11-year history. The nominal case for optimism is real. The real-wage case for skepticism is also real.
From the mid-1990s through the early 2020s, Japan's nominal average wage was nearly flat while peers climbed. Deflation hid the damage at home, but the gap that opened against the United States, Germany, and South Korea is the clearest record of an economy that stopped giving raises.
Inflation has eroded $7.25 by roughly 35 percent in real terms over 16 years. Thirty states and the District of Columbia have responded with their own higher minimums. The federal floor still exists; it just no longer functions as the floor for most US workers.