problems importing from csv

I am trying to import some data from spreadsheets. Included in the data
sets are US monetary values. These appear in the CSV file, like this: $1.00
The column is defined like this: NUMERIC(5,2) NOT NULL. When I try to
import this data using the \copy functionality, i get the following error;

stan@smokey:~/pm_db/live_data$ psql < import_employee.sql
ERROR:  invalid input syntax for type numeric: "$1.00"
CONTEXT:  COPY employee, line 2, column hourly_rate: "$1.00"

How can I work around this?

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neither liberty nor safety."
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