raise the federal minimum wage to $11 per hour within the next 4 years.

At the current $7.25 rate, full-time workers earning minimum wage make an annual $14,500, while the federal poverty level for a family of two is $15,130. Some have argued that Obama should have called for an even higher wage floor — he promised $9.50 in his 2008 campaign. Regardless, the United States has one of the lowest minimum wages among developed economies;
as the International Labor Organization found in their most recent Global Wage Report, in most developed countries minimum wage workers make a much higher percentage of the median full-time wage. In France, for example, the minimum wage is about 60 percent of the average salary, while in the United States it’s just below 40 percent. Only Japan and Spain trail the United States in how much the lowest-rung workers make,