It's not clear at this point when or even if House Speaker Pelosi will move toward the $15 minimum wage bill. One alternative to a blanket $15 federal minimum wage, being pushed by moderate Democrats like Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, would calculate a minimum wage regionally. A decade of no wage hikesIt's been 10 years since the federal minimum wage went up. But there is some recent research on local minimum wage hikes that challenges the long-held view that a higher minimum wage leads to fewer total low-wage jobs. And among those paid hourly, half of them in the South -- where there are almost no higher-than-federal minimum wage laws -- made at or below the federal minimum wage.

Source: CNN May 19, 2019 12:00 UTC