The Minimum Wage Would be Almost $18 an Hour If It Had Kept Pace With Productivity Growth

This is a fact that would have been worth mentioning in a piece discussing a plan to raise the minimum wage in California to $10 an hour by 2016. The federal minimum wage had risen in step with productivity growth over the years from 1938-1968. Since then it has not even kept pace with the rate of inflation. The unemployment rate in 1968 was less than 4.0 percent.