By Micky Bedell November 26, 2019
The Facebook 10-year challenge has come around again. People who use the social media platform are encouraged to post photographs of themselves from now and 10 years ago. The point is to see how much people, and their lives, change in a decade.
Here’s something that hasn’t changed in 10 years: the federal minimum wage. It was last raised in 2009, to $7.25 an hour.The Facebook 10-year challenge has come around again. People who use the social media platform are encouraged to post photographs of themselves from now and 10 years ago. The point is to see how much people, and their lives, change in a decade.
Here’s something that hasn’t changed in 10 years: the federal minimum wage. It was last raised in 2009, to $7.25 an hour.
Twenty-nine states, including Maine, and many large cities mandate a higher minimum wage, so most minimum-wage workers earn more than the federal minimum. Still, wage stagnation is a reality, especially for low-wage workers. Although The Brookings Institution warns that measures of wage growth can be easily manipulated (by using different time periods, different measures of inflation and by looking at different wage sectors), it found some consistent trends between 1979 and 2018: Wage growth was larger for earners at the high end of the wage scale, and men’s earnings fell while those for women rose.
Raising the federal minimum wage won’t solve all these disparities, but it can help.
Maine offers a look at what happens when the minimum wage is significantly increased. Maine voters in 2016 backed a referendum to gradually raise the state’s minimum wage. It is now $11 an hour and will rise to $12 an hour next year. It will be adjusted for inflation after that.