The Rise of American Minimum Wages, 1912-1968
@article{Fishback2020TheRO, title={The Rise of American Minimum Wages, 1912-1968}, author={Price V. Fishback and Andrew J. Seltzer}, journal={Labor: Public Policy \& Regulation eJournal}, year={2020} }
This paper studies the judicial, political, and intellectual battles over minimum wages from the early state laws of the 1910s through the peak in the real federal minimum in 1968. Early laws were limited to women and children and were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court between 1923 and 1937. The first federal law in 1938 initially exempted large portions of the workforce and set rates that became effectively obsolete during World War II. Later amendments raised minimum rates, but…
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