What do we know about people making minimum wage?Īgain, according to BLS, they are mostly young and they are less likely to have more than a high school education, if that. California has the highest statewide minimum wage at $14 per hour for companies that employ 26 or more people – but San Francisco and other cities in the state have higher wages, as do New York, Seattle and others. A large portion of the states with a minimum wage higher than $7.25 raise it automatically with inflation. More than half of states – 29 – have a minimum wage higher than $7.25 and 45 cities have a minimum wage higher than their state, according to the Economic Policy Institute. How much of the country has imposed a minimum wage higher than the federal floor? They represent 1.9% of the 82.3 million American workers paid by the hour.īut almost all workers make less than $15, which is the minimum in only a few places. How many people make the federal minimum wage?īecause so many states have their own, higher minimum wage, relatively few American workers make the federal minimum wage.Īccording to BLS surveys, about 392,000 workers earned the minimum wage of $7.25 in 2019 and 1.2 million workers were paid a wage below the federal minimum. Rather than rely on Congress to agree on raising the minimum wage again in 10 years or so, a bill introduced by Sanders would require it to be raised each year by the Department of Labor based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Sanders wants to raise the minimum wage incrementally – by $1 or $1.50 each year – until it reaches $15 per hour in 2025.īut this next part is important. How high do Democrats want to raise the minimum wage? In terms of inflation and purchasing power, the $1.60 minimum wage in 1968 would be worth about $12.27 in 2021 dollars. In that regard, the federal minimum wage has dropped. Not as far as it went in 2009! Because of inflation, you would need $8.81 per hour in 2021 dollars to equal $7.25 in 2009. The minimum wage was first enacted in 1938 at 25 cents an hour. That 12 year gap is the longest American workers have ever gone without a bump. While states and cities have recently raised their own minimum wages – in some places, after voters approved ballot measures – it has been more than a decade since the federal minimum wage was last raised in 2009. When was the last time the minimum wage changed? The federal minimum for those workers is just $2.13 an hour. There’s also a big exception to the minimum wage for workers who make tips, such as waiters. The highest minimum wage is $15 in Washington, DC. Some states have a much higher minimum wage than others, and some cities are even higher than the rest of their states. The federally mandated wage floor is $7.25 per hour.īut the minimum wage is actually different around the country. Here’s what you need to know to understand the debate. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.” “What’s radical is the fact that millions of Americans are forced to work for starvation wages, while 650 billionaires became over $1 trillion richer during a global pandemic. “A $15 minimum wage is not a radical idea,” said Vermont Sen. The argument about income inequality, which is growing in the US, is central to the widespread effort to raise the minimum wage. It is completely related in that the Covid economy has hurt low wage workers – those in food service, child care and home health care, for instance, who can’t work from home – more than it’s hurt people who are able to work from home. Improving worker pay is unrelated to pandemic relief in that raising the minimum wage has long been a Democratic priority. Here's what's in the House Democrats' stimulus relief plan
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