CVS upping its base pay to $15 an hour is a milestone because it employs 300,000 people and puts pressure on other small-store retailers (such as Walgreens-Boots) to follow suit. A scan of the top 10 retailers suggests that among big-box employers, only Home Depot and Lowes have failed to promise at least $15 an hour to workers, though Walmart's promise seems to have a big asterisk by it.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. President Joe Biden supports lifting the federal minimum to $15, but a proposal to increase it to that level recently stalled in Congress. In April, Biden signed an executive order lifting the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $15 in early 2022 from the current level of $10.95.
