I was researching what the minimum wage is in the USA and found out that it's much more complicated than I thought. It doesn't work like here in Brazil with a single value for the whole country. The federal minimum is US$ 7.25 per hour since 2009, but each state can set a different amount. So it gets messy because one person can earn US$ 7.25 and another US$ 17.50 depending on where they work.

I looked into what the minimum wage in the USA is converted to reais, and it's interesting. If you take the federal rate of US$ 7.25/hour and consider a 40-hour week, it amounts to about US$ 1,160 per month, which in reais is around R$ 6,000. But it varies a lot. Washington DC has the highest, US$ 17.50/hour, which is about R$ 14,560 monthly. Meanwhile, Georgia and Wyoming have the lowest, but in practice, the federal rate prevails.

What I found curious is that the minimum wage in the USA is actually not enough to live on in most states. With the federal US$ 1,160, you can't pay rent (average US$ 1,626) plus food and bills. The people working in restaurants, supermarket cashiers, these basic roles, earn that. And there's a detail: if you receive tips, the base salary can be even lower.

Larger states have much higher values. California US$ 16.50/hour, New York between US$ 15.50 and US$ 16.50 depending on the city. Washington US$ 16.66/hour. It seems that the higher the cost of living, the higher the minimum they set. Even so, researchers say that the minimum wage in the USA isn't really comparable to Brazil just by currency conversion because the purchasing power is different. One dollar there buys less than the equivalent in reais here.