Scott Johnson: Minimum wage then and now

The April 16 news article “Triangle sees low-wage protest” on low-wage employee needing assistance prompted me to do additional research on the topic.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5.7 percent of the full-time workers in North Carolina are paid $10 or less per hour. In 1968 the federal minimum wage of $1.60 per hour would today be equivalent to $10.97 per hour accounting for inflation. So 130,000 workers in our state are paid between 66 percent and 90 percent of what their peers were paid 47 years ago.

I also found an interesting statement that said the CEOs of the 50 largest employers of minimum wage workers in the United States were paid an average of $9.6 million, which is more than 600 times the federal minimum wage.

If there is societal good in a minimum wage, and we index other government programs such as Social Security and pensions to cost-of-living adjustments (inflation), it’s reasonable to increase our federal wage to $10.97 per hour.

I am curious as to what the average minimum pay would be if CEOs of those top 50 employers of minimum wage workers were paid the same multiple today as in 1968 and the difference were allocated to their lowest paid full-time workers.

This story was originally published April 20, 2015 at 6:35 PM with the headline "Scott Johnson: Minimum wage then and now."