Minimum wage was established on October 24, 1938 after President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act. (Grossman) Minimum wage was set to allow working class citizens an opportunity to work a reasonable amount of hours for pay that would enable individuals to maintain a minimal quality life.
In today’s economics minimum wage is used as a price control or price floor that the government enforces. A price floor is a minimum price for a product or service above the market’s equilibrium price. Selling any product or service sold below the price floor is considered illegal. Since the price of a commodity or service is increased the demand will go down lower than the quantity supplied creating a surplus. This theory also creates a surplus in employment. When minimum wage is increased or a price floor is set there will be a surplus of employees and the demand for workers will decrease. Well in order to accurately determine whether the minimum wage employees are receiving is enough to maintain a minimal lifestyle, we must first understand how the minimum wage is calculated. According to the United States Department of Labor, “federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees is $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. The federal minimum wage provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).” The Fair Labor Standards Act is a set of standards pertaining to youth employment, overtime pay, and other laws that affect employees within private and public
There are a lot of people around the world who struggle with money and a satisfactory way of life. Whether they be in the United States or across the globe, there is a standard minimum wage set for the working class of their country. In the Unites States, there is a federal minimum wage of seven dollars and twenty five cents per hour worked. Almost every state has another set minimum wage, which typically is a little higher than the federal minimum wage, but it cannot be lower than seven dollars and twenty five cents. Countries set minimum wage laws, to ensure there is a basic quality of life amongst its citizens. As the minimum wage goes up in certain states, the quality of life also improves. The problem with a higher minimum wage, is now people are getting paid higher for entry level jobs which are meant for teenagers and people new to the workforce. If the minimum wage keeps increasing across the country, teenagers and young adults will have a much more difficult time finding jobs.
The Fair Labor Standards Act was first introduced and passed on June 25, 1938 and became effective on October 24, 1938 within that bill minimum wage was first introduced (Grossman). The bill itself was an issue because the supreme court kept turning down the bill but after countless attempts, the bill was passed a year later. President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced that bill in hopes for fair pay as he states “all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work” (Roosevelt). President Roosevelt basically wanted to end the injustice and inequality many workers faced when receiving payment. Minimum wage has been and is currently an issue because of the augmentation on the cost of living and low income many workers
The minimum wage is intended to protect workers and fight poverty. In the United States, the federal government sets the minimum wage at $7.25 per hour although many states set higher minimums. There is currently a movement to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. This movement is called the “Living Wage Movement” (Living Wage Resource Center, 2016) or the “Fight for $15” (Fortunato, 2016) and purports to address the problem of poverty in America.
Minimum wage is an important and hot topic throughout the world, especially America. The minimum wage is the lowest amount of salary that an employer can give to their employees for their work. The federal minimum wage is covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as FLSA. The FLSA covers standards for government, local, and state employees, including overtime pay and record keeping. This protects the rights of the employers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, was the first president to establish the idea of minimum wage in 1938 due to the economic downfall of the Great Depression. (“History of Minimum Wage”) The Great Depression was a huge recession for the economy and for the people. Since FDR applied the minimum wage, the minimum wage keeps increasing over the years. According to Bebusinnessed website, the first year with minimum started at twenty-five cents an hour, which is equal to around four dollars and fifteen cents in USD in present currency (“History of Minimum Wage”). Over time and many presidents later, in 2016, our lowest minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty-five cents. From the numbers presented on this website, the minimum wage seems to be increasing and getting better with time, but in fact, the government is not to kept up with the current “real” dollar amount. Nowadays, parent employees cannot fully support their children. The real question, in our society, should minimum wage be increased or decreased in order to fulfill both the government
The argument for minimum wage has remained remake consistent over the years. Some people are against minimum wage and the other think minimum wage can help you in a certain way. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Unites States federal government passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The law has been amended almost every year to expand coverage of the wage floor and to increase the wage itself. Many of the fifty states have enacted their own minimum wage laws, some of them set even higher than the federal level. Minimum wage jobs don’t only help adults at hard times it help teenagers and college students. I learned that the proponents for minimum wage believe the raw value of one’s labor to a business
In 1938, the first national minimum wage laws in the United States were passed as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which served as “a floor below wages,” to reduce poverty and to ensure that economic growth is shared across the workforce. Today, many people who work for companies that pay at or near the minimum wage and remain near or below the poverty level rely on government health and food security and income programs to supplement their living expenses. Since 1938, there have been many additional policies to the Fair Labor Standards Act that have changed many things, such as increasing the national minimum wage numerous times to the currently salary level, which was set in 1997. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was a policy to change the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 in three additions, which began in July of 2009. (http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/posters/minwagebwp.pdf)
The federal minimum wage laws were first created on June 25, 1938 through the Department of Labor and signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This enacted the first $0.25
The minimum wage debate brings about a range of reactions from different people. There are those who believe that there shouldn’t even be a minimum wage and that wages should be determined by the markets. On the other hand, we have those who vigorously argue for increasing the wage minimum citing inflation, the poverty line and worker productivity. Regardless, we do have a federal minimum wage rate in the United States at $7.25 per hour, with some states having a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum. President Obama, in his first state of the union address of his second term proposed “Tonight, let’s declare that, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour” (The White House 2013). A year later, he has revised that number to $10.10 per hour after signing an executive order that has already raised the minimum wage for federal workers to that number. (The White House 2014). With more and more states raising their own minimum wage, a minimum wage increase seems almost imminent with Democrats and Republicans getting closer to a deal. (Bolton 2014). But we are more interested in the efficiency of a minimum wage implemented at the federal level. The main question that surrounds this debate is whether this price floor in labor markets is efficient given that the stated goal of the minimum wage is to make sure full-time workers earn a living wage and are above the poverty line.
The current federal minimum wage is too low to allow people to earn a living wage and has failed to keep up with increases in inflation, productivity and economic growth in recent years. Wages have been fixed at $7.25 an hour since 2009, resulting in a 40 hour work week that allows one to earn only $15,000 a year, an amount that lies just barely above the poverty line (13). If the worker is responsible for children and works full-time to earn this amount, they drop below the poverty line. These low
The minimum wage is the mandated price floor paid on hourly or daily basis for the employees regulated by the government or the union. In “Federal Minimum Wage”, New Zealand and Australia enacted the first minimum wage law during the late 19th century to prevent employers’ exploitation of workers. In 1912, Massachusetts passed the first minimum wage legislation in the US that was enforced for women and children, and fifteen more states followed in the next eleven years. However, the Supreme Court abolished the minimum wage laws in 1923 because the laws violated the women and employers’ Fifth Amendment or their right to negotiate a binding agreement without government interference. In the US, the first federal minimum wage law passed 25 cents per hour as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to help struggling workers during the Great Depression (“Federal Minimum Wage”). Since 1938, the minimum wage law has increased twenty-two times to $7.25 to keep pace with inflation. However, minimum wage laws have exemptions in some field of works such as tipped employee who earns $2.13 an hour in direct wages if the amount plus the tips received is at least the mandated minimum wage. In addition, agricultural workers earn their salaries by the number of bags or weight multiplied by the crops’ selling price (“Minimum Wage and Overtime Basics”).
U.S. Congress passed the federal minimum wage law in 1938 as part of their Fair Labor Standards Act. Federal minimum wages were intended to ensure fair wages were paid to an alarming amount of women and youths employed and paid substandard wages. This also seems to be the case today, where countless Americans who work full time, cannot make ends meet by making minimum wage. Evidence shows that raising the minimum wage would drive consumer spending, thus producing faster macroeconomic growth. Wage stagnation is one of the key things holding back our economy from growing the way we need it to.
Minimum wage is the lowest amount of pay that employers can legally pay their workers. Minimum wage in the United States, is set at $7.25, the federal government takes out up to 12 percent of the whole payment for taxes. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) are the ones who have set the minimum wage from 1938 to the current year, 2017. The FLSA is a law that sets various labor regulations that includes interstate commerce employment, requirements for overtime pay, and the limits on child labor. Some argue that teenagers and low paying workers should be paid more than $7.25 dollars an hour, while others argue that they should suck it up and be thankful for what are paid. Researchers have stated that high minimum wage increases have helped bring the poverty level down in the United States. Other researchers have said that the level of minimum wage has little to no effect on the poverty level. Minimum wage is a happy medium that a company or organization sets for an employee; they use this as a starting point for an employee to receive raises and bonuses. Minimum wage is thought out to be by some a terrible thing because it is the reason our poverty levels are down, but with the minimum wage it has helped with economic growth.
In the United States, the minimum wage was passed during the Great Depression in 1938 to protect the buying power of normal workers in a period in which the “unemployment rate was still a very high 19 percent” (Sklar, 2009, p. 1). Since that time, there has been significant debate about the controversial topic of raising the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage law was created to eliminate unfair practices of sweat shops and manufacturing companies during this time period. Thus, the minimum wage is defined as the smallest salary that an employer is legally allowed to pay employees for their work. Since the time of the Great Depression, minimum wage has been utilized to guarantee that employees are paid
Minimum wage introduced by the congress as the subdivision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. At that time, congress set the minimum wage at 25 cents an hour. According to Tricia Hussung, Business Analyst, in 1968, adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage
In the United States, minimum wage has remained at a low number for several years. Minimum wage is defined as the lowest possible income that an employer can legally pay an employee. This ensures that all people are fairly paid and not defrauded by companies or businesses. Minimum wage is considered a price floor and the minimum wage laws determine the lowest price possible that any employer must pay for labor. In an economic model, the quantity of supplied is greater than the quantity demanded and the minimum wage is above equilibrium price and quantity. Minimum wage prevents labor supplied and labor demanded from moving