President Donald Trump recently signed a coronavirus relief package that extends and enhances benefits for America’s rapidly growing numbers of unemployed. But the bill does nothing to fix the payday hardship that crushes so many Americans still working: a federal minimum wage that has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for years.
Millions of U.S. workers — through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond — will continue to earn this starvation wage, or close to it.
Advocates for working Americans were hoping for more. The relief bill that House Democrats put on the table included a $15 minimum wage for employees at any corporation that takes federal bailout dollars. But this was stripped from the version of the bill passed by the GOP-controlled Senate.
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