This weeks’ Time Machine takes a look all the way back to the 1930s and 40s when the minimum wage was less than a dollar!
The Federal minimum wage was first established in 1938.
In a 1948 Gallup Poll, 39% of Americans said a single person who just graduated high school should be making between 45 and 75 cents an hour as a minimum wage.
About a third – 35% – said the minimum wage should be 75 cents to one dollar, 18% said over a dollar, and 1% said under 10 cents.
What’s the point of working for 10 cents an hour!
But, wait…what is a 1948 dollar worth today? Turns out one 1948 dollar is the equivalent of $13.01 now. That doesn’t seem to be such a big difference after all!
So, how do Americans feel about the minimum wage now?
In the U.S., the national minimum wage is $7.25 and has been since 2009, meaning someone getting $7.25 an hour in 2024 is only making $4.96 in 2009 dollars.
But, many states and cities have enacted their own, higher, minimum wages. For instance, the highest minimum wage in the U.S. currently is $17.00 in Washington D.C.
A Pew Research survey from 2021 shows 62% of Americans support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour including 40% who strongly back the idea.
While we might have very different views on how much minimum wage should be, Americans have supported the idea of a minimum wage for almost 100 years. In 1937, Gallup asked whether or not Americans favored a federal minimum wage and a sizeable majority of 69% said they did.
The first minimum wage in 1938 was 25 cents or $5.43 in today’s dollar. It has been close to a century and the minimum wage has effectively only gone up $1.82.
Support on the issue hasn’t changed much, but neither has the minimum wage.
This post was written by Marist Poll Media Team member Athen Hollis.