We Are Not Getting a $15 Federal Minimum Wage Anytime Soon

Twenty-Nine. That is the number of quarters that the lowest paid workers in our country receive for an hour of labor. 40 million people in the United States work minimum wage jobs; of those, 2 million work for the federal minimum, the smallest wage a full time, adult worker can legally earn in the nation. 

Many states have increased their minimum wages, as the purchasing power of the dollar has decreased due to inflation. Alas, the lowest-paid workers are still earning $7.25 per hour in 21 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. 

Living in California, we have a very skewed perception of the minimum wage situation in our country. We have the second-highest minimum wage; outpaced only by the District of Columbia, the only place in the United States where the minimum wage is $15 an hour.

It is a fact that our state’s minimum wage has continually changed with the times. Whether it has been raised enough to compensate for rising housing, food, healthcare, insurance, and amenities costs is a matter for debate.

 According to the Los Angeles Times, most Californians (a majority in every examined category) want the current $14 to be increased further. While rural Californians can finance their lives ‘just enough’, urban workers cannot afford housing within a reasonable distance from their work.

Despite its inadequacies, the wage situation in California is the paragon of social welfare compared to the economic conditions in other parts of the county. In the states abiding by the federal minimum wage, worker conditions have become unlivable. 

States enforcing $7.25 minimum wage are mainly concentrated in the South, Midwest, and Rocky Mountains, where 15 states have deliberately set their minimum wage to that value. Meanwhile, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina lack any minimum wage laws at all. These states abide by the federal minimum. 

Even worse, Wyoming and Georgia have a state minimum wage of $5.15, a ridiculously low number which does not suffice for the most basic level of life in any state. This number is not the residue of never-updated archaic legislation; it was established at around the same time as the federal minimum wage. Employers in these states would have the power to pay workers $5.15 were it not for federally imposed minimums.

These federal minimums were instituted at the close of the Great Depression. In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the first minimum wage at $0.25, or approximately $4.65 today.

The minimum wage was continuously adjusted over the next several decades until it was set to $1.60 in 1968. Adjusted for inflation, $1.60 becomes a surprising $12. That is the highest, proportionally, that the minimum wage has ever been. In truth, minimum wage workers in the sixties and seventies had more buying power than their contemporary counterparts. So why is it only $7.25 today?

It turns out that if our economy was fair, the lowest paid workers would earn figures that would place them in today’s upper class.

Since 2009 when Congress raised it one last time, the minimum wage has seen no change. Politicians have not raised the minimum wage to adjust for inflation since. Democrats have been heralding an increase with great fervor for the past half-decade. They have been using this popular promise as a selling point for their joint campaign. 

In 2017, Nancy Pelosi promised voters a $15 minimum wage in the “first 100 hours,” if the Democrats won a majority in the house in the midterm elections. They did, but an entire election cycle later, the minimum wage remains unchanged.

Joe Biden, in his campaign promises, illustrated his absolute commitment to a $15 minimum wage; he swore before millions of voters to do everything in his power to get it there. While he continues to advocate it, his actions speak louder than his words.

Mere days ago, the senate passed the latest relief bill. The past weeks, Democrats promised and advocated a minimum wage increase, one that would at last hike it to that fabled, sought after $15. This provision, originally the crux of the bill, was cut from it. 

This cut was the work of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who justified that the provision was not in line with the standards for economic relief efforts. On the cusp of change, the dream concluded abruptly, in a decision that the president and vice-president could overturn, but chose not to.

While Republicans have predictably opposed any increase, Democrats have recycled the minimum wage movement. For many years now, they have been exploiting voters by promising them $15/h in exchange for their votes, never delivering, and making the same sweet promises during the next election cycle. 

Opponents of raising the minimum wage claim that prices will go up and economic growth will stall. This argument is old and baseless: according to the Institute for Employment Research, a 10% increase in local minimum wage results in only a 0.4% increase in prices. What these people fail to realize is, if the claim was true, then it would only prove the underlying, inescapable inequality within the system.

While prices rise, our productivity increases: manufacturing and services have seen rapid developments in efficiency, quality, outreach and speed. According to Marketwatch, U.S. worker productivity has increased 200% since the seventies. A worker in 2021 can serve more customers and make more goods in a day than their parents and grandparents could in three.

If the minimum wage kept up with worker productivity, and was adjusted respective to the dollar, it would be $25 nationwide. Someone working a 40 hour work week on a $25 wage makes $262,000 a year, four times the 2021 average national income. It turns out that if our economy was fair, the lowest paid workers would earn figures that would place them in today’s upper class.

This perspective clearly reveals the depth of inequality in this nation. While any increase is welcome, the solution to this disparity is not a $15 minimum wage, or a $25 one. The economy is built in such a way that the lowest paid will never earn enough to live complete lives. 

Not only is it too late now, but adjusting the bottom end of the lower bracket has, throughout all American history, never resulted in much change for the people. If we want the minimum wage to mean something, to be a livable wage, this country needs radical restructuring.