This story is produced by the award-winning journalism nonprofit Capital & Main and co-published here with permission.
At $7.25 per hour, the value of the federal minimum wage is at its lowest point in 66 years. It has been 13 years since the last increase — an all-time record. Since the inception of the Federal Labor Standards Act, instituting the minimum wage, in 1938, the longest periods of congressional inaction on raising the wage floor were two decade-long stretches, from 1981 to 1990 and again from 1997 to 2007.
The current cost to workers? Those who are paid the federal minimum in 2022 are essentially earning 27% less than did their counterparts in 2009, the time the last increase took effect.
Those are the conclusions of a study recently published by the Economic Policy Institute, and they are not likely to be countered anytime soon. After the Raise the Wage Act failed in the U.S. Senate last year, experts say there’s been no push to update the federal minimum to reflect the drastic changes in the economy since 2009.
“It’s really sad, because it’s basically an abdication of the legislators’ responsibility to protect workers,” said David Cooper, director of the EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network.
To make up for federal inaction, state legislatures and local governments have implemented their own wage increases — and the pace of...
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