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President Barack Obama will announce during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address that he's raising the minimum wage for workers under federal contracts to $10.10 per hour, an administration official told The Huffington Post.

If Congress won’t act on jobs and the economy, President Obama promises that he will—a message he’s expected to push in Tuesday’s State of the Union. The problem is, there’s not much the president can do his own. 

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama will announce his intention to issue an executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10.

(NEW YORK, NY) – This morning, the White House announced that President Obama will sign a “Good Jobs” Executive Order requiring government contractors to raise the minimum wage for their lowest-paid workers to $10.10 for all new and renegotiated contracts. The president will include this announcement in his State of the Union Address tonight.

President Obama plans to sign an executive order requiring that janitors, construction workers and others working for federal contractors be paid at least $10.10 an hour, using his own power to enact a more limited version of a policy that he has yet to push through Congress.

After a year of strikes and protests there’s a victory for many federal workers demanding that their government to pay them a living wage. President Obama in tonight’s State of the Union address will announce plans to sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay workers at least $10.10 an hour. The action affects workers currently earning less and will apply to new federal contracts.

Low-wage, federally-contracted janitors and construction workers will have a new minimum wage of $10.10 per hour, under an executive order announced by the White House Tuesday. Advocates said the full scope of the order, which will be formally announced during tonight’s State of the Union address, remains unclear, but could include hundreds of thousands of employees under future federal contracts. [...]

Earlier this month, the New York Times and other media reported on a new study by Harvard financial economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. It concludes that the duration of the recovery from the 2007/08 recession and financial crisis is similar to historical recessions that were linked to financial panics. The recovery period is measured by a return to levels of GDP per capita in various countries over a long historic period.

When it comes to income inequality, Emmanuel Saez and Raj Chetty are two of the most important academics in the field. With professional clout, access to the best data, and a renewed public interest in the topic since Occupy Wall Street, the release of the Saez et al.