Comment by ajross
1 day ago
The vast majority of US workers are employed in jurisdictions with minimum wages much higher than the federal limit. It's true the national law is inadequate, and there are a handful of genuinely impoverished places where that matters. But almost every metro area is at $15/hr or higher now.
Also your article is about long term trends, and has data that ends in 2022 it looks like. In point of fact real wages since the pandemic have gone up, and by a historically notable amount.
$15/hr is about $2500/mo or $30k/yr gross, which is not enough to live alone is most large cities without rent assistance. Even with a roommate sharing a 2B it cutting it close and definitely not something you can build up substantial savings with.
If wages kept up with inflation since the 70s, the minimum wage would be around $23/hr, not even accounting for increases in worker productivity.
No, Federal minimum wage was $1.60/hr from 1968-1974. That's $10.24 in 2024 dollars, or significantly less than what works expect from low wage jobs today. And 1974 was a trough, it was raised multiple times in the late 70's.
I remain frustrated at the extent to which fake info gets distributed in discussions like this. You can look this stuff up! And in fact US workers[1] are wealthier today than they ever have been.
[1] There's a distasteful caveat though: white, male US workers in 1974 were doing much better relative to their peers than the same demographic is today. But minorities and women have done really well. A lot of the concern among the very male HN set over "workers" actually turns out to be an expression of frustration over social change and not economics at all.
Great, then it should be easy to raise the Federal minimum wage.
No, because the ruling party doesn't believe in it, obviously. But in practice the bulk of the US labor market runs at a wage level determined by state and municipal wage laws and not the federal minimum. Even if you're technically in rural Texas, you can't hire anyone at $7.25 an hour because you're competing for labor that can gets jobs in Austin at $15.
In Philadelphia PA wait staff in restaurants are paid less than $3 an hour. Yes they get tips. So does the wait staff in NYC that get $15 an hour. I was told this by my daughter who worked in both places. Any discrepancy with the $ is mine.