California Gold Rush Wages
During the 1849 Gold Rush, California labor was so scarce that cooks and carpenters earned several times Eastern rates, sometimes 8 to 16 dollars a day.
Overview
Common wages back East ran around one to two dollars a day, while Sacramento and San Francisco shops competed for any labor at all, blacksmiths and builders clearing multiples, and eggs and laundry priced accordingly. The bonanza deflated as miners flooded in and claims industrialized into hydraulic companies working wage men. The era's lasting economics were not the gold but the wage labor, banking and railroads it seeded. Figures are approximate historical accounts.
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