This posted while I was still in the middle of my other rant, but when I was doing the four guys in one apartment thing putting myself through community college, my job was overnight janitor at Knott's Berry Farm and paid $6.50 an hour. Minimum wage in California is now $16.90, so that at least is more than double.

After the big corrections entry level jobs had to do during and after COVID, I think it's probably more than you think. As an example, the BLS says in 2000 the mean hourly wage for "Food preparation and serving related" jobs was $7.72 / hour [1]. As of May 2025, they list the median hourly wage (yes median and mean aren't the same, but for this purpose, I don't think the differences would affect the overall point that much) at $16.85 / hour [2]

Likewise for "Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance", we went from $9.41/hour to $18.12 / hour.

Though admittedly not every field saw such gains. "Sales and related" didn't do quite as well, going from $13.46 to just $18.52. "Office and Administrative" did a bit better going from $12.64 to $22.81, but that's still a bit under the 2x mark. "Construction and extraction" also missed the 2x mark by a bit, going from $16.56 to $28.63.

Still the numbers I think aren't quite as dire as the vibes make it feel right now.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/oes/bulletin_2000.pdf [2]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf