Missouri's method for calculating minimum wage seen as a model for push to raise federal wage [View all]

That’s because a provision of Missouri’s state minimum wage fits in with the president’s overall quest that begins with hiking the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour, to at least $9 an hour.

Missouri’s state minimum is now a dime more, at $7.35 an hour, because of a cost-of-living clause in the state law that provides for annual adjustments. Harris said the president would like to see the same sort of indexing in the federal law.

“The president’s proposal includes that idea,’’ Harris said, “that once the minimum wage is raised to $9 an hour, the minimum wage thereafter would be indexed to the cost of living, so that if the cost of milk and gas and utilities went up, minimum wage workers would be able to keep up.”

If Congress were to approve the president’s proposal, Harris said wages would go up immediately for 15 million workers nationally who now earn the minimum $7.25.

https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/31105/labor_secretary_minimum_wage_052413