the unemployment rate in the United States decreased from 1949 to 1950 from 5.9% to 5.3%. At the same time the U.S. economy grew by more than nine percent. The increase in minimum wages was a substantial factor in the economic growth in the United States that year.

Real Wages from the Sixties

 

During summers in the 1960s I worked for the minimum wage while attending college.  In 1968 the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour. In 2014 dollars that $1.60 minimum wage translates to a minimum wage of $10.88. But the minimum wage now is $7.25, a third less than it would have been had the minimum wage kept up with inflation.

A recent study by Los Angeles AFL-CIO found that the stimulus effects the added income that workers would receive from a...

Please subscribe to keep reading.