By Paolo Confino
Fortune, July 24, 2024. Also Yahoo Finance, AOL News, MSN
The federal minimum wage has not risen from $7.25 for 15 years. That run extends the longest such streak since the federal minimum wage was implemented in 1938.
However, because of inflation and changes in the cost-of-living, the federal minimum wage is worth far less now than at any point since 1949. A full time employee working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year would earn a total $15,080 a year, before taxes. And that assumes they have paid sick days, vacation, and family leave, all of which are benefits that are unlikely to be provided in minimum wage jobs.
“The minimum wage has fallen so far behind the cost of living that millions of workers are earning wages too low to live on at the minimum wage and above it,” says Holly Sklar, CEO of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a network of businesses that support raising the minimum wage. ...
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