Figure A

What if the federal minimum wage had risen like CEO salaries since the late 1960s?

Federal minimum wage
1968 federal minimum wage (in 2024 $’s)  $11.82
2024 federal minimum wage  $7.25
What the 2024 federal minimum wage would be if it had grown at the same rate as CEO pay since 1968  $203.10
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Economic Policy Institute

Note: For the last bar in the chart, we applied the growth rate of CEO pay between 1968 and 2024—1618%—to the 1968 federal minimum wage. Details on CEO pay growth can be found here: https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay/.

Source: Federal minimum wage data from data.epi.org and CEO pay landing page (Table 1B). 

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