The minimum wage is now the lowest it’s been in 70 years—making the federal wage floor ‘officially a poverty wage,’ report finds

The last time the U.S. raised the federal minimum wage, Apple’s Siri hadn’t even been invented yet.

July marked the 17th full year in which the federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25, the think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) noted in a recent post. Apple would introduce its AI iPhone bot two years after the current wage was set. The base pay staying the same as inflation continues to rise means today’s wage floor is at its lowest value in 70 years, with a purchasing power lower than its 1968 peak.

“We are currently in the longest period of inaction on the federal minimum wage since its inception in 1938,” CEPR senior economist Sylvia Allegretto wrote. “In fact, today the federal wage floor is officially a poverty wage.”

Indeed, last year the federal minimum wage became a “poverty wage,” meaning a full-time, year-round job paying $7.25 an hour would fall under the $15,650 poverty threshold created by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Minimum wage has reentered the national spotlight amid an ongoing affordability crisis marked by increased inflation from tariffs and the Iran war, as well as stubbornly high home prices and childcare costs. Among the........

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