Ah, good place to start. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which means that depending on the city you're in, 60 minutes of work will just about buy you a Chipoltle burrito (without guac). By historical standards, it's fairly low. Thanks to inflation, the minimum today wage is …show more content…
This ripple effect occurs when a raise in the minimum wage increases the wage received by workers earning slightly above the minimum wage. This effect of the statutory minimum wage on wages paid at the low end of the wage distribution more generally is well recognized in the academic literature. Based on this recognition, we quantify the number of workers potentially affected by minimum wage policy using the assumption that workers earning up to 150 percent of the minimum wage would see a wage increase from a higher minimum wage. We hasten to note that a complete analysis of the net effects of a minimum wage increase would also have to account for potential negative employment effects. Our main goal of this empirical exercise is to dispel the notion that the minimum wage is not a relevant policy lever, which is based on the faulty premise that only a small number of workers would be