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For the first time since the recession, Rhode Island raised its minimum wage, from $7.40 to $7.75. That figure is still shy of neighboring states Massachusetts’s ($8.00) and Connecticut’s ($8.25) wages, and doesn’t change the fact that there is no state where a person can afford a two-bedroom apartment working a forty-hour week on any state’s minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage (despite campaign promises) is still $7.25, lower than what a minimum-wage worker made in 1968, adjusted for inflation.
On his show Saturday, Nation Editor-at-Large Chris Hayes put Rhode Island’s news into perspective, along with a host of stories that you should know from last week.
—Zoë Schlanger
