On July 24, 2009, the federal minimum wage reached $7.25 an hour. It has not moved since. That is 17 years without a single increase, the longest freeze in the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Depression-era law that established a wage floor for American workers in the first place. A full-time worker earning $7.25 today takes home $15,080 a year, which sits just $20 above the federal poverty line for a single adult.
Add one child to that household and the math falls apart entirely. A family of two falls thousands of dollars below the poverty threshold, making them eligible for food assistance, Medicaid, and other programs that congressional Republicans are currently trying to cut. The same Congress that refuses to raise the wage floor is simultaneously dismantling the safety net that exists because the wage floor is so low.
How Far the Floor Has Fallen
The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968, when workers earned $1.60 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, that $1.60 equals roughly $15 an hour in 2026 dollars. The current $7.25 is worth less than half of what the minimum wage bought at its historical high. The Economic Policy Institute calculates that simply indexing the 2009 rate to inflation would put the floor at about $10.60 today. Congress has not done even that much.
Inflation has eroded roughly 30 percent of the $7.25 rate's purchasing power since 2009. Workers on the federal floor are, in real terms, earning significantly less than their 2009 counterparts, while corporate profits have climbed steadily and CEO pay has grown by multiples. The wage floor has not kept up with the cost of housing, groceries, healthcare, or anything else a worker actually needs to live.
"The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage." — Economic Policy Institute, 2025
Twenty states remain on the federal floor with no higher state-level minimum. Those states include Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and other high-population states across the South and Midwest. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2024 shows that women are more likely than men to earn at or below the federal minimum, and workers in service and food preparation industries are disproportionately affected.
Bills Exist. The Will Does Not.
The problem is not a lack of legislative proposals. In April 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Bobby Scott introduced the Raise the Wage Act of 2025, which would lift the federal minimum to $17 an hour by 2030 and deliver raises to an estimated 22 million workers. In April 2026, House Democrats went further, introducing the Living Wage for All Act, which would phase the minimum up to $25 an hour by 2031 for large employers, then tie future increases to two-thirds of the national median wage.
None of these bills will pass the Republican-controlled Congress. Republican leadership has consistently opposed any federal minimum wage increase, citing potential job losses, despite decades of economic research finding that modest minimum wage increases do not cause significant unemployment. The actual consequence of inaction is documented and ongoing: tens of millions of workers earning wages that have, in real terms, been declining for 17 years.
The Case for a Regulated Floor
Markets set wages only under conditions of genuine competition between employers for workers. At the low end of the labor market, that competition is structurally limited. Workers in retail, food service, home care, and domestic work have limited mobility, limited bargaining power, and, in states without unions, no mechanism to demand more. Without a functioning floor, wages in those sectors drift toward the minimum, which is exactly what has happened.
A regulated wage floor is not socialism. It is the basic infrastructure of a market economy that does not consume its own workforce. Every wealthy country maintains one. Germany raised its minimum wage repeatedly in recent years. The United Kingdom indexes its floor annually to median wages. Australia's minimum wage is the equivalent of more than $14 an hour in U.S. dollars. The United States, which likes to call itself the world's leading economy, has not touched its floor in 17 years.
The counterargument from the left is that only full public employment or income guarantees can solve poverty wages. That view misses the leverage available within a regulated market. A higher wage floor pushes wages up across the low-wage sector, reduces reliance on public assistance, and keeps spending power in the hands of people who will actually spend it locally. It does not require dismantling private enterprise. It requires Congress to act.
Congress has chosen not to for 17 consecutive years. The 17-year freeze is a policy choice made on behalf of businesses and industries that profit from cheap labor, enacted against the workers who produce it. Calling it neglect gives Congress too much credit. The floor stays at $7.25 because sustained political pressure from low-wage employers has kept it there.
Sources
- Economic Policy Institute: Congress Has Never Let the Federal Minimum Wage Erode for This Long
- NPR: It Has Now Been 15 Years Since the Federal Minimum Wage Rose to $7.25
- Economic Policy Institute: The Federal Minimum Wage Is Officially a Poverty Wage in 2025
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, 2024
- CNBC: Democratic Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Raise Federal Minimum Wage to $25 an Hour
- U.S. Senate HELP Committee: Sanders, Scott, 175 Colleagues Introduce Bill to Raise Minimum Wage to $17 by 2030
- U.S. Department of Labor: State Minimum Wage Laws
Independent. Unfiltered. Unbought.
This is independent, sourced accountability reporting by Impeach 47. No corporate owners, no paywall.
Get new posts delivered free by email: impeachh47.substack.com.
Follow on X: @Impeach_47.
Follow on Threads: @impeach.47.
Follow on Instagram: @impeach.47.
Subscribe on YouTube: @impeach_47.
If this reporting is useful, the way you support us is simple: wear the movement. Every hat, shirt, and sticker from impeach47.earth is a walking billboard and the thing that keeps this research fed.
