President Biden’s 2022 State of the Union Address included a call for a $15 federal minimum wage. According to an Economic Policy Institute study, a phased increase to a $15 federal minimum wage by 2025 would raise the earnings of 32 million workers—21 percent of the workforce, no small thing.
The current federal minimum wage is $7.25. The federal minimum wage was established in 1938, as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Congress has voted to raise it 9 times since then, the last time in 2007. That last vote included a mandated three step increase that brought it to its current level in July 2009.
It has been 13 years since the last increase in the federal minimum wage, the longest period since its establishment without an increase. Taking inflation into account, workers paid the federal minimum wage in 2021 earned 21 percent less than what their counterparts earned in 2009, and prices keep rising. Outrageously, this eroding federal minimum wage continues to set the wage floor in 20 states. Where is the justice in that?
Continue reading
Reports from the Economic Front 