Outside of the U.S. Capitol Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, said the federal minimum wage needs to be increased to keep up with inflation.
“I am delighted to announce this morning that on June 14, the Senate Health Committee will be marking up a bill to raise the minimum wage to $17 an hour over a five-year period,” Sanders said.
What You Need To Know
- Sen. Bernie Sanders said he will introduce legislation to increase the minimum wage
- He suggested the federal minimum wage should be raised to $17/hour over the next five years
- Massachusetts already has a minimum wage of $15/hour
- 30 States have higher minimum wages than the federal baseline
In Massachusetts, the state minimum wage has been increased to $15/hour already. The federal wage though hasn’t been changed since 2009.
“I think the most important thing to understand is that the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation at all," said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross. "We currently have the lowest minimum wage that we’ve had since the early 1950s.”
Matheson said that the current federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour and if it were to have kept up with inflation, it should be at least $10/hour
Currently, 30 states have state minimum wages that are higher than the federal, but those are voted on by the people in those states. When it comes to getting it done on a national level, Matheson doesn’t see it happening.
“It's wildly unlikely that time that wage increase gets passed through a Republican House at this point,” he said. “The places where minimum wage haven't increased have not increased because politicians have voted for them, but because they have been introduced on a ballot.”