Did you know the first federal minimum wage was introduced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938? Minimum wage was set at 25 cents an hour, which is equivalent to about $4 per hour in today’s money. Since FDR’s first federal minimum wage in 1938, the minimum wage has been raised 22 times by 12 different presidents. In 1968, minimum wage as a percentage of the poverty level was at 99%. In other words, someone working a minimum wage job full-time for one year would be just 1% under the poverty line.
The federal government established a minimum wage in a 1938 law called the Fair Labor Standards Act, which also marked the first time that employers were legally required to pay workers overtime for certain jobs. The purpose of the minimum wage was to stabilize the post-depression economy and protect the workers in the labor force. It was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the 1990s was the
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Shouldn’t we all be able to make enough money to maintain a normal standard of living? This is called living wage. Minimum wage is calculated by the government whereas living wage is calculated by the Living Wage Foundation. Minimum wage doesn’t take into account the actual costs of necessities; therefore, this wage hasn’t been hiked in roughly a decade. The Raise the Wage Act of 2017 will raise minimum wage from its current state to $15 by 2024. With the increase of wages, the economy would grow due to more people using less government assistance, and increased productivity and efficiency on the job. To attract the most talented and engaged workers, a living wage must be attainable. Paying a living wage isn’t just a nice thing to do for our employees, it’s an absolute requirement for us if we want to stay in business and keep the lights on (Ravichandran, Hari,