The federal minimum wage is worth 31% less today than it was in 1968.
Friend,
When members of Congress were debating the Raise the Wage Act to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, EPI’s district-by-district data, demonstrating how many people would get a raise, made an enormous difference in moving enough members to pass the bill.
The federal minimum wage is worth 31% less today than it was in 1968. Workers earning the federal minimum wage today have $6,800 less per year to spend on food, rent, and other essentials than did their counterparts 50 years ago.
The extraordinary rise in inequality over the last several decades is directly tied to the pay-productivity gap. CEOs and corporate shareholders are getting rich off the fruits of productivity growth while worker pay has remained relatively flat.
Teacher strikes across the country in 2018 and 2019 highlighted the profound underinvestment that’s been made in the nation’s schools in recent decades. The teacher pay gap has been increasing since the mid-1990s. And in 2018, teacher’s weekly wages were 21% lower than wages of other college graduates.
