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}, url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:213888916} }
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…
9 Citations
The Political Economy of Minimum Wage Setting: The Factories and Shops Act of Victoria (Australia), 1896-1913
- 2024
Political Science, History
The Victorian Factories and Shops Act of 1896, the second minimum wage law in the world, empowered administrative agencies (‘Special Boards’) to set trade‐specific minimum rates on the basis of age,…
The Minimum Wage as a Tool for Racial Economic Justice
- 2023
Economics, Political Science
Participants at the 1963 civil rights march on Washington supported minimum wage laws using arguments of economic justice. Many economists at the time argued against the minimum wage based on…
The Economics of Gender-Specific Minimum Wage Legislation
- 2024
Economics
During the 1910s, twelve U.S. states passed and implemented the country’s first minimum-wage laws. They covered only female employees, often in a subset of industries. We study the impact of this…
What is the Optimal Minimum Wage?
- 2021
Economics
The extensive literature on minimum wages has found evidence for the compression of relative wages and mixed results for employment. This literature has been plagued by a number of problems. First,…
The Efficiency of Occupational Licensing during the Gilded and Progressive Eras: Evidence from Judicial Review
- 2023
Law, Economics
This paper proposes a novel approach to assessing the efficiency and distributional consequences of occupational licensing statutes during the Gilded and Progressive eras, based on the practice of…
The Characteristics of Low Bid Price Survey Standards and Their Impact
- 2021
Economics
This study aims to show that the low bid price survey standard has lower limit price characteristics and analyzes the behavior of firms in the public procurement market where the lower price limit is…
The efficiency of occupational licensing during the Gilded and The efficiency of occupational licensing during the Gilded and Progressive eras: Evidence from judicial reviews Progressive eras: Evidence from judicial reviews
- 2022
Law
proposes a novel approach to assessing the efficiency and distributional of one important type of early – occupational licensing – based upon the practice judicial review. many states enacted These
97 References
Minimum Wages
- 2020
Economics
The debate regarding the effects of minimum wages was invigorated in the US when, during the 1980s, states began setting minimum wages higher than the federal level. This new cross-state evidence…
Employment Effects of Minimum Wages, 1938-50
- 1957
Economics
E United States Department of Labor has recently released interim , findings of its three-year study of the effects of the $1.00 minimum wage.2 In evaluating these findings, it will be useful to…
Rule of Law in Labor Relations, 1898-1940
- 2020
Law, History
The paper examines changes in labor regulation between 1898 and 1940 in the context of issues related to rule of law in two areas. 1) Many see the 1905 Lochner Supreme Court decision on men’s hours…
The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage
- 1912
Economics
The fixing of a Minimum Wage by law?making it a penal offense to hire labor at a lower rate than that fixed by the law? is now an accomplished fact, of which the world has had half a generation of…
The Political Economy of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
- 1995
Political Science, Economics
This paper examines the congressional passage of the American minimum wage law, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Voting on the act is modeled as a function of the concentration of the…
Some Effects of the $ 1.00 Minimum Wage in the United States
- 1960
Economics
The United States has now had 20 years of experience with a national minimum wage.' Under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the minimum rate applies uniformly to covered employees throughout the…
Impact of Minimum Wages on Other Wages, Employment, and Family Incomes
- 1976
Economics
ONE OF THE ISSUES that has traditionally split politicians from economists, and now splits radical economists from traditional economists, is the minimum wage. As the passage of the Fair Labor…
Employment Effects of Minimum Wages
- 1960
Economics
IN TWO recent articles,1 Professor John M. Peterson criticizes statements and conclusions of "some labor economists"2 regarding the employment effects of minimum-wage legislation and attacks the…
Teen-Age Unemployment and Real Federal Minimum Wages
- 1973
Economics
A federal minimum wage was first enacted under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to raise the minimum standard of living without curtailing employment. This note examines the impact of the federal…
The Adoption of Workers' Compensation in the United States 1900-1930
- 1998
History, Economics
The adoption of workers' compensation in the 1910s, from a variety of perspectives, was a significant event in the economic, legal, and political history of the United States. The legislation…