A full-time worker on the federal minimum wage takes home roughly $15,000 a year before taxes. That is 40 hours a week for 52 weeks at $7.25, the rate the U.S. has used since July 2009.
Congress set that figure through the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, and nothing has passed since. It is the longest stretch without an increase since the federal minimum was created in 1938. Raising it takes an act of Congress, and none has cleared in the years since 2009.
How the wage got here
The first federal minimum wage came in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Courts later found the law unconstitutional. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 replaced it with a floor of 25 cents an hour. In 1968, the wage reached $1.60, and its purchasing power peaked. Inflation has kept it from matching that value in the decades since.
A frozen wage loses ground each year. The $7.25 of 2009 bought more than the $7.25 of today, and workers at the minimum have taken an effective pay cut without anyone formally cutting their pay, according to the advocacy group Fight For A Living Wage.
States fill the gap
With Washington stalled, states and cities have written their own minimums. Some sit well above $15 an hour and override the federal rate for workers there. Where no higher local wage exists, $7.25 remains the law, so the number means something different depending on the state.
The group points to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, which prices housing, food, health care, transportation and child care area by area. By that measure, no county in the country has a cost of living that $7.25 an hour covers at full-time hours. For a single adult the living wage is often more than double the federal minimum, and higher still for anyone supporting children.
The same group says the median home price has climbed toward five times income during the freeze, and that family health premiums have reached about $25,000 a year, citing KFF.
