The Rise of American Minimum Wages, 1912-1968

摘要

Minimum wages have been among the most controversial government interventions in labor markets for more than a century. We focus on the political economy of the rise of the American minimum wage from its beginnings as state laws for women and children in the 1910s through the years when the federal minimum wage reached its peak value in real terms in the late 1960s and the coverage of the workforce became nearly complete in the early 1970s. Figure 1 documents the trend rise in the real value of the federal minimum between 1938 and 1968 as well as its subsequent decline to levels that had been reached in the early 1950s. In the course of the discussion, we will suggest five main themes. First, states legislated the original minimum wage laws starting in 1912 and played prominent roles in raising minimum wages in the 1940s and adding coverage in the 1950s. States have again led the way in raising minimum wages in the last 25 years.