1998-may be a bad year to calculate from- I remember my friend who was training the homeless to clean up so they could get jobs in Western WA. , because there seemed to be NO bodies available- the labor pool was dry. Every biz was desperate for workers. Then the tech crash and 9/11 sorta put the kibosh on that- So pumping the minimum wage in a boom may have a totally different result than in a depression.
I would be extremely reluctant to hire anyone in this class war climate- machines do not complain, show up late, do drugs and are as smart as half the population.....
Seriously, with CNC robotic machinery improving and expanding into ever new markets, the question of a "minimum" wage may end up being irrelevant- there may simply BE no low paid unskilled jobs left- at all. (unless they are public money protected union jobs) . IMO, this is going to be one of the defining questions of the future- what to do with a mass of people who are unnecessary to productive efforts.
Our current "solution" is to pay them , but we already have the lowest proportion of workers to population in our history. Imagine factories, mines,farms, service industries filled with robotic workers, maintained by a handful of skilled techs, owned by a very few ultra wealthy groups- they can be taxed to a point, but as they will be the ones who control the money spigot,(essentially owning the government) there will be increasing reluctance to supply the goods to pacify the jobless, and a pressure to just get rid of the jobless- by one means or another.......
Just another one of my distopian futurist visions........