When it comes to raising the minimum wage, most of the action is in cities and states, not Congress
The $7.25 federal minimum wage is used in just 21 states, which collectively account for about 40% of all U.S. wage and salary workers.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The $7.25 federal minimum wage is used in just 21 states, which collectively account for about 40% of all U.S. wage and salary workers.
No lame-duck session in the nearly 5 decades for which data is available has been as legislatively productive as that of the 116th Congress.
Many of the millions of Americans voting in Tuesday’s midterm elections will have to do so while working around the demands of their jobs – hitting their polling places before work, taking an extra-long lunch break or going afterward and hoping to make it before the polls close. As they stand in line, many of them may wonder why it is that the United States votes on a Tuesday, of all days.
While women are still underrepresented in top corporate jobs, there has been a small increase in the share of women executives in such positions over the past decade.
Turnout in this year’s primaries for Congress and most state governorships surged compared with the last midterms in 2014, particularly among Democrats. Nearly a fifth (19.6%) of registered voters – about 37 million – cast ballots in primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives – a 56% increase over the 23.7 million who voted in 2014’s House primaries. Turnout that year was 13.7% of registered voters.
More members of the U.S. House of Representatives are choosing not to seek re-election than at any time in the past quarter-century.
Although the movement to limit congressional terms has been largely dormant for the past two decades, 15 states do limit how many terms their own legislators can serve.
Most of the biggest inflation-adjusted wage gains have occurred in metro areas that have directly benefited from the boom in U.S. oil and gas production
The cost of living can vary widely not just from state to state but within individual states, which can make setting an appropriate minimum wage more difficult.
The hundreds of exemptions, deductions and other breaks embedded in the tax code will cost the federal government more than $1.3 trillion this fiscal year.
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