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Article: The wage mobility of minimum wage workers. (New Minimum Wage Research: A Symposium)
- Article from:
- Industrial and Labor Relations Review
- Article date:
- October 1, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Cornell University, ILR Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IN April 1990, the federal minimum wage was increased for the first time in nearly a decade. At its previous rate of $3.35 per hour, the statutory minimum had lost about one-third of its purchasing power and had also dropped relative to the median wage for hourly workers by a similar amount. With a rise to $3.80 in April 1990, the wages of about one million low-wage workers went up, and with a further rise to $4.25 in April 1991, over two million workers received higher wages.
Although the statutory increases were accompanied by immediate wage gains for significant numbers of workers, it is less clear to what extent their wages would have increased without ...