[lbo-talk] query: calculating historical wages

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Tue Jun 8 15:53:47 PDT 2004


On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Jeet Heer wrote:


> A question for you economists. I'm working on an article about an early
> 20th century U.S. artist. I know that he earned $10,000 in 1919; $15,000
> in 1921; and $22,500 in 1925. I know this is a large salary for that era
> but I'd like to be able to place the figures in some sort of context.
> Was he on the top 10% or the top 1%? Is there any reliable source that
> tracks average salaries in 20th century America. Thanks. Jeet

According to an inflation calculator I just googled,

$10,000 in 1910 = $192334.56 in 2002; $22,500 in 1925 = $228290.04 in 2002.

Not bad. (Although that makes me twitchy about my retirement savings!) I'm sure Doug can help out with the income distribution questions; I suspect these are in the top 5%.

Miles



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