Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–October 16, 2014. The value of the minimum wage has been so severely eroded by inflation that businesses today are paying minimum wage workers 25 percent less than they were in the 1960s. Policymakers’ failure to raise the wage floor has contributed to decades-long wage stagnation and caused an increasing number of full-time workers to turn to public assistance programs to make ends meet. In Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $10.10 Would Save Safety Net Programs Billions and Help Ensure Businesses Are Doing Their Fair Share, economic analyst David Cooper finds that if the minimum wage were raised to $10.10 an hour, 1.7 million Americans would no longer rely on government assistance. This would reduce government spending on current income-support programs by more than $7.6 billion per year, allowing this money to be re-purposed into either new programs or expansions of existing programs to fight poverty. The public saves 24 cents for every additional dollar paid by employers to workers under a minimum wage increase to $10.10.
