The U.S. federal minimum wage was first established during the Depression in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It started at merely 25 cents and it has risen to $7.25 per hour.
Along with establishing minimum wage, the Fair Labor Standards Act also banned oppressive child labor and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.
Many believe that the minimum wage is something that only teenagers earn, but that is simply not the case. 48.2% of the 3 million workers who were at or below the federal minimum in 2014 were ages 16 to 24, though only 24% are …show more content…
The federal minimum wage was meant to promote economic development and stop the original "race to the bottom" of employers moving to cheaper labor states in a downward spiral.
Ever since President Roosevelt first instituted the idea of a minimum wage there has been debate about it. He believed “...That no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has the right to continue in this country.” Furthermore, he actively advocated for “living wages… more than bare subsistence” in which he defined as “the wages of decent …show more content…
When minimum wages are increased, there are several things that employers must do in response to the increase. Firstly, they have to increase the wages of all workers who were being paid minimum wage to match the new minimum. Second, they have to slightly increase the wages of some workers in order preserve the wage hierarchy. Lastly, They have to pay their own wage bill. If businesses wanted to cover the cost of a 10-percent raise in the minimum wage by raising their prices, they would only have to to raise prices by less than 0.1 percent.
Minimum wage raises pose no inflationary threat. The potential minimum wage’s effect on inflation would be raise the rate of inflation by less than 0.1 percent. This would raise the average annual inflation rate of about 2.6 percent to just about 2.7 percent. This change is so minuscule that the rate is effectively unchanged by the wage increase. The potential impact on inflation that this poses is smaller than the margin of error for the Department of Labor’s estimate of