Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel

One hundred years ago this week, on June 4, 1912, Massachusetts enacted the first minimum wage law in the United States – the first in a series of similar laws that states passed in the years before the federal minimum wage was established in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. 

In honor of this milestone, I read up on the history of the minimum wage and was struck by how one old adage seems to apply: the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Here are a few facts about the minimum wage in its early days that remain just as true today.   

• The minimum wage is critical issue for women.  That first minimum wage law in Massachusetts set up a commission to determine a minimum wage only for women workers, who were especially vulnerable to exploitation by employers and regularly were paid less than men.  It was the first female Cabinet member – Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt (and an all-around rock star) who later advocated forcefully for the first federal minimum wage law, often citing the particularly deplorable wages and working conditions faced by women and children.

I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty good today — I’m just hours away from starting a long holiday weekend, and I get to report more happy news on the minimum wage! Today’s update comes from New Jersey, where the General Assembly just passed a bill (A-2162) that would raise the state minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 per hour and index the wage to keep pace with inflation. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that over half a million workers — the majority of them women — will get a raise if A-2162 is enacted.

That raise is sorely needed: full-time minimum wage earnings of $14,500 a year leave a mom with two children thousands of dollars below the federal poverty line in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the country. Raising New Jersey’s minimum wage to $8.50 per hour would mean an extra $2,500 per year, which could make a real difference for women and families struggling to make ends meet. And indexing the wage for inflation would help ensure that the buying power of the minimum wage does not erode as it has over the past decades; indeed, if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since the 1960s, it would be more than $10.50 per hour today.

Low-wage workers and their families are not the only ones who would benefit from a minimum wage increase – New Jersey’s economy would get a boost, too. More money in workers’ pockets means more dollars flowing into local businesses, and that means more jobs: according to EPI, raising the minimum wage to $8.50 per hour would generate over $277 million in economic activity in New Jersey, creating close to 2,500 jobs.