How Long It Takes to Earn a Beer on Minimum Wage

For a minimum-wage worker in Bangladesh, grabbing a cold one after work amounts to a serious investment. To afford a beer, that employee must toil for 13.4 hours, according to an analysis by Quartz. The report compares the price of a half-liter of beer in a country's bars with that country's minimum wage. Among the results:

• Beer-seekers will have the hardest time in Georgia, where it takes 15.1 hours of minimum-wage work to earn a drink.
• Puerto Rico is at the opposite end of the spectrum: Work for 12 minutes on minimum wage, and you can pay for a beer.

• US workers have to work for twice as long as those in Puerto Rico; at 24 minutes, the US rate matches those of Canada, Spain, Taiwan, Germany, and Japan, among others.
• After Georgia and Bangladesh, the countries facing the most work per beer are Libya (7.5 hours) and Ethiopia (6.6 hours).
• Luxembourg, Australia, and Cyprus are runners-up for the briefest periods of toil, at 18 minutes per beer.

(More minimum wage stories.)