Hi, I'm historian Eve Fisher, and I did indeed say this. Actually, it's based on hours of labor, multiplied by the minimum wage. Here's how it works: to sew a shirt with long sleeves, yoke, wristbands, collar, all hemmed and finished inside and out - to sew this by hand would take about 7 hours. But you have to get or make the cloth. Weaving a shirt like this would take about 4 yards of cloth, and it would be a fine weave: the Knoxville Museum of Art estimates two inches an hour. So 4(yards)*36(inches)/2 = 72 hours. Spinning the thread for all that cloth would take about 400 hours. That adds up to 479 hours, multiply that by minimum wage, and it actually adds up to $3,472.75, or about 2,200 pounds. See this article for a complete breakdown of the figures: http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-lesson-in.html

A man's shirt for most of history until the mid 19th century takes 10-40 hours on average to construct depending on the quality of the fabric. It also requires about two yards of fabric for construction and minimal enough supplies to not need to be counted. These shirts are easily constructed by unskilled labor, since they are nothing but squares and rectangles. By the 18th century they're mass produced in warehouses and sold by the 6 or 12. The pay for unskilled labor is relatively low compared to the "middle class" of tradespeople. So, even for the lower sort, a shirt is 1-3 days of pay (12-14 hour days) and they're probably going with the coarser shirt at about 1 days pay. For merchants, tradesmen, or anyone with a trained skill it would be much less. If someone is so poor as to not be able to afford that, the church in many areas provides the basic garments like that. It can be made in the home, being of simple shapes, but the 10 hours to make a course one is usually better spent earning money.

If we paid everyone involved in the process of making a shirt today a living wage, how much would it cost? (Serious question)