SURPRISE! Flipping Burgers in Idaho Can Pay Very Well
You may have heard of the Big Mac Index. It’s designed to show how many Big Macs you can buy measured by earnings and inflation. Long a marker of gauging the U.S. economy, researchers have examined a related measure. I saw the story in the Financial Times. It may be behind a paywall, but I could view it at least once before I later got a message asking me to subscribe.
The researchers looked at pay for workers who flip burgers. The job is fairly standardized across the country. There are variations because, in states with a high cost of living, the pay could be adjusted. Over the last decade, burger flippers had modest wage gains in real dollar terms. Then in the year of COVID, pay spiked upward. But by last year, the workers, on average, were seeing a decline in real wages.
Here’s where I believe it gets interesting, and it’s not mentioned in the original story. Cooking burgers pays the least in Mississippi. The state’s minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, unchanged for 15 years. Some states have set their own higher wages, so you can explain a higher rate of pay. But the third best pay for flipping burgers in America is right here in Idaho. The state also has the same minimum wage as Mississippi.
Drop in McDonald’s or Carl’s, Jr. and you’ll often see signs that offer pay at nearly $20.00 an hour. Is it the labor shortage?
What this proves is the law of supply and demand, and that government has no business artificially inflating wages.