(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - The Federal Minimum Wage, frozen at $7.25 since 2009, is now at its lowest real value in 77 years and a major driver of the affordability crisis facing low-wage workers.

For over a decade, the senior Democrats on the House and Senate’s Labor Committees have consistently introduced and championed the Raise the Wage Act, which would significantly raise the federal level (most recently, to $17 an hour in 2030) and index it to median wage growth going forward.

But Congress as a whole has failed to take action on the legislation.

In the absence of federal movement, states have moved on their own, thanks in large part to the Fight for $15 Campaign, 21 States and the District of Columbia - home to half of all U.S. wage earners, will have a minimum wage of at least $15 by 2028.

But that patchwork still leaves 20 States - home to about 55 million Workers - at $7.25, and updating the Federal floor to a modern benchmark is the only way to reach these Workers.

Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to two-thirds of the national median wage would lift pay for nearly 40 million Workers - about a quarter of the workforce.

Two-thirds of the median - equivalent to roughly $17.70 today, a projected $20 in 2030 and a projected $25 in 2038, matches the benchmarks used in other high-income countries and tracks the direction of recent minimum wage research.

Indexing to median wage growth thereafter would keep the floor from losing ground to inflation or falling behind the broader economy.

A Federal minimum at two-thirds of the national median would eliminate poverty wages and move the floor meaningfully toward a living wage in much of the country: A single adult working full time could cover modest expenses in half of U.S. Counties under the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) Family Budget Calculator thresholds; Maintaining the two-thirds minimum-to-median ratio would lock in those gains, improving affordability for U.S. Workers and their families; and It would also durably narrow the gap between low-wage Workers and the typical Worker, with Black workers and women seeing the largest benefits.

The two-thirds benchmark is also well-supported by economic research.

Decades of studies of State and Federal Minimum Wages find higher floors raise pay for low-wage Workers with little to no effect on employment, and a smaller but growing body of work on minimum wages approaching two-thirds of the median reaches the same conclusion.

Setting the Federal floor at two-thirds of the median, and updating it annually, would raise incomes at the bottom and prevent the kind of decades-long slide that has left the current minimum at its lowest real value in 77 years.

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