I am reading Engles' "Principles of Communism" and wanted to check the validity of one of the chapters. In chapter 5, he says

"The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life. However, since business is sometimes better and sometimes worse, it follows that the worker sometimes gets more and sometimes gets less for his commodities. But, again, just as the industrialist, on the average of good times and bad, gets no more and no less for his commodities than what they cost, similarly on the average the worker gets no more and no less than his minimum."

I just looked up the median hourly wage in the US, and it looks to be ~$16 per hour, which is higher than all 50 states' minimum wages. Only Washington DC has a minimum of $16 per hour, all the rest are less with most being $7.25.

Wondering if this holds up still today or if I'm misunderstanding it