Time/Doritos Index drops 0.9%

It's been a while since we computed the Time/Doritos Index, our gauge of Portland workers' consumption power. As readers may recall, the index estimates how long it takes an employee making minimum wage to earn enough take-home pay to buy a "party size" bag of Doritos (about 180 chips).

Here's the tale of the chip for June 2026: Averaging out what they're charging at WalMart, Amazon, Kroger, and Target, the current average is $6.39 per "party size" bag. (The "list price" printed on the bag is well over $7.)

The minimum wage in Portland is currently $16.30 an hour. Assuming a 10 percent tax rate, that works out to $14.67 an hour to take home. Comparing that after-tax hourly wage with the price of the "party size" bag, we see that it takes the worker 26 minutes and 18 seconds to make enough money for the goods.

That's actually 15 seconds quicker than it took the last time we ran the numbers, in 2024. And so the index declined by 0.94 percent over that span. Munch on, kids!