IN THE NEWS: Minimum wage increase
By CareerBuilder blogger on Jul 24, 2008 in Careers, Compensation
Many news outlets have been talking about the federal minimum wage increase. The federal minimum wage goes up to $6.55 an hour, effective today. (Many individual states have set their own minimum wages; about 20 states currently have state-mandated minimum wages that are higher than the federal wage.) This will have an impact on many part-time and hourly full-time workers.
This is the second in a series of three annual increases put into effect with legislation passed last year. Prior to the first increase last year, the minimum wage had stayed at $5.15 an hour for ten years. Next year will see the third and final increase, to $7.25 an hour.
Of course, as we mentioned in a recent post, these gains have been impacted by the rise in gas prices. One of our recent surveys found that many people were cutting out extras and sacrificing on some things to be able to afford the price of gas. Hopefully, the wage increase will help offset those costs for minimum wage workers.
