A few days ago, someone I know had commented that the minimum wage rate should not be raised. He said (and seemed proud) that the minimum wage when he started to work was only $6.25. I’m not sure what his point was — maybe that if he got by on $6.25, everyone should be able to… or maybe he was making the point that he was so old that the minimum wage was “only” $6.25 back then.
Of course, neither one of those “arguments” holds much water. When I first started to work, I never heard of “minimum wage.” I suppose that when I was young, employers just paid what they considered a fair wage, or just ignored the fact that there was a minimum wage set by law.
The minimum wage in the United States is set by U.S. labor law and various state and local laws. The first federal minimum wage was created as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt — however, it was later declared unconstitutional. In 1938, the year I was born, the minimum wage was established at $0.25 and hour by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Over the years, the minimum wage purchasing power peaked in 1968 — at $1.60 an hour.
In 2020, there were 29 states and the District of Columbia with a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum. The latest statistics I could find (May, 2019) indicated that the average amount for minimum wage earners is $11.80.
A report released recently by the Congressional Budget office estimated that incrementally raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would benefit 17 million workers, but would also reduce employment by 1.4 million people. It would also lift 0.9 million people our of poverty, possibly raise wages for an additional 10 million workers, cause prices to rise, overall economic output to decrease slightly, and increase the federal budget deficit by $54 billion over the next 10 years. It’s easy to see why this is such a controversial issue.
I never worked a job that paid minimum wage — I suspect that when I was young, I worked a few jobs paying less than minimum wage. Life is not easy and it seems to be getting more complicated.
I’ve heard it said that the minimum wage should be a living wage and I’ve heard some say that instead of focusing on this sort of defeatist mentality where we’ve gotta up the minimum wage, why don’t we focus on creating better paying jobs? I guess I agree with both statements.
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