Raise the minimum wage rally.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research
has put together two calculator clocks showing how inflation has demolished the buying power of the federal minimum wage. While several cities and states have moved to boost the local minimum wage, sometimes significantly, the federal minimum is now $7.25 an hour. That was arrived at in July 2009, the last in a three-step phase-up passed by Congress in 2007 to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour, where it had been stuck for 10 years.
The clock below shows how much minimum-wage workers have lost in the intervening five years as inflation has nibbled away at their earnings.
The clock below shows how much how much America's minimum-wage workers have lost and continue to lose since July 24, 2009, because the minimum wage was not raised to the peak (inflation-adjusted) 1968 level and indexed to inflation going forward.