Hours of Work Needed to Buy S&P 500, Gold, and Oil

August 8, 2016 By Jonathan Ping Leave a Comment
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Here’s an interesting series of charts that measure how many hours of work it has taken to buy various things like the S&P 500 index, an ounce of gold, or a barrel of crude oil. You could see it as an alternative to adjusting historical prices by CPI inflation. Found on Twitter, done by @TheChartmeister.

work500

In July 2016, the average hourly earnings of a production worker according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics was $21.59 an hour. In January 1964, it was $2.50 an hour.

In July 2016, it would take roughly 100 hours of work to buy the S&P 500 index if it was in dollars. Back in 1964, it would have only taken roughly 30 hours of work.

Here are direct links to the tweets.

Filed Under: Investing
Last updated: August 8, 2016
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