Minimum Wage Follow-up

Prior to the 2006 elections, I wrote a piece about minimum wage ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio. (By the way, 87% of readers who responded to a Time poll supported those initiatives, and all of the initiatives ended up passing.) More than six months later, the federal government finally followed the lead of the 33 states that had already bumped up the minimum wage beyond $5.15 by voting to raise the minimum wage nationally for the first time since September 1, 1997. For the millions it affects, the impact of the minimum wage is significant, and the move marks a big step in the storied history of wage floors in the U.S.