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Impact of a stalled minimum wage

The Economic Policy Institute has released a new report on the minimum wage. One of EPI’s charts really shows the impact of a stalled minimum wage.

Every year that the minimum wage is not raised, inflation slowly erodes the minimum wage’s real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) value, meaning that minimum-wage workers cannot afford to buy as much as they could in previous years.

As shown in Figure A, the current minimum wage of $7.25 is worth roughly 25 percent less than the minimum wage in 1968, when it equaled $9.58 in today’s dollars.

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