Published on Thursday, March 08, 2018 by Washington Post
Recent wage growth has been best in states where minimums were raised
The analysis underscores what by now should be a pretty simple intuition: Lifting wages…. lifts wages. (Photo: via TalkPoverty.org)
Among the many important charts that wage analyst extraordinaire Elise Gould has in her latest update on U.S. wage trends, the one below is especially revealing. It shows the increase in real hourly earnings for low-wage workers, those at the 10th percentile of the wage scale (meaning 90 percent earn more; 10 percent earn less) broken down by gender and by states that raised or didn’t raise their minimum wage at any time between 2013 to 2017.
A little background. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2010, so more than half the states have acted on their own to raise their wage floor (many cities have done so too). Gould reports that a bunch of states, listed under the figure, raised their minimum wages over these years. Some did so due to legislation, either new or a phase-in of an already legislated increase; others did so because they index their wage floor to inflation (which should be, but isn’t, the law of the land; the real value of the federal minimum is constantly being eroded by inflation).
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