Trump touted low-wage worker pay gains but much of the credit goes to state minimum wage hikes

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Trump touted a “blue collar boom,” noting that wages “are rising fastest for low-income workers.”

He’s correct, but Trump left out one thing: a large portion of those gains can be traced to minimum wage increases in more than half the states.

The median wage for the bottom fifth of workers has climbed much more sharply in states that have raised their pay floors than in states that haven’t, according to a study provided exclusively to USA TODAY by the National Employment Law Project (NELP).

During his presidential campaign, Trump at times advocated keeping the federal minimum at $7.25 an hour and other times said that was "too low." In July, the Office of Management and Budget opposed a House-passed bill that would more than double the U.S. base wage to $15.

The administration’s “efforts to reduce taxes, eliminate regulations and implement fair trade deals are driving economic growth and increasing workers’ take-home pay far more effectively and efficiently than legislation like” the house bill, the OMB said. .That measure did not come up for a vote in the Senate, where Republicans have opposed a minimum wage hike for years.

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But in the 26 states that lifted their base wages at least once from 2013 to 2018 — real or inflation-adjusted — median hourly pay rose 3.8% from the end of the recession in 2009 through 2018, according to a NELP analysis of Labor Department data. In the 24 states without a minimum wage hike, real median pay fell half a percentage point, the NELP figures show.

That trend appeared to continue in Trump's administration. From May 2017 to May 2018, the latest data available, real wages rose 2.4% for the bottom fifth of workers in states with minimum wage increases versus 0.26% for such workers in states that kept their pay floors unchanged.

More broadly, real pay for the bottom fifth of workers nationally increased 3.6% from 2009 to 2018 while wages for all other workers were stagnant, the NELP figures show.

“The big increase in low-wage workers’ pay is largely the result of the fight by low-paid workers to raise the minimum wage across the country,” says Irene Tung, senior researcher and policy analyst at NELP.

Strikes by fast-food and other workers since 2012 helped spark a wave of state minimum wage hikes in recent years.

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