A person earning the minimum wage for a full-time job in 2009 when it was raised to $7.25 was effectively earning $5,000 more than a person earning the same wage and working the same hours today.
"Think what that means for someone who's trying to afford rent, or a car payment, or student loans or whatever it may be," Cooper says. "That's an enormous difference in that person's quality of life."
Many parts of the U.S. have taken minimum wage increases into their own hands, with Nevada, Oregon, Connecticut and Washington, D.C. all increasing their minimum wages as of July 1, CNBC reports. Other states with higher minimum wages include Vermont, South Dakota, New York, California and New Mexico. But 20 states still have a minimum wage of $7.25.
President Joe Biden has advocated for a $15 federal minimum wage. Earlier this year he signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal workers and contractors to $15.
An effort to include a $15 minimum wage in last year's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package was halted by the Senate parliamentarian, who deemed it ineligible.
Despite some states increasing their minimum wage, Cooper says that real change will only be seen once it happens at the federal level, adding that a low wage floor affects more people than just those earning the minimum.
"It is also damaging for people who are a little further up the wage ladder and earning $3 or $4 more than the minimum," he says. "If that wage floor had been raised more regularly over the course of the last 20 to 30 years, those folks would be earning a lot more today than they currently are."
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