Low-wage Workers Are Older and Better Educated than Ever

John Schmitt and Janelle Jones

CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs from Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

Abstract: Relative to any of the most common benchmarks – the cost of living, the wages of the average worker, or average productivity levels – the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is well below its historical value. These usual reference points, however, understate the true erosion in the minimum wage in recent decades because the average low-wage worker today is both older and much better educated than the average low-wage worker was in the past.

Keywords: minimum wage; low-wage; education; age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J J1 J11 J3 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 6 pages
Date: 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epo:papers:2012-11

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