Workers are 46% more likely to make below $15 an hour in states paying only the federal minimum wage,
I guess one could get by on this salary if one were frugal, could find low-cost housing, maybe used public transportation, ate cheaply, etc. There is not much room for anything else. And yet people still manage to do it. As EPI details, Nineteen percent of workers (9.76 million workers) in 20 states are paid less than $15 per hour, compared with 13% of workers in the 30 states.
“Workers are 46% more likely to make below $15 an hour in states paying only the federal minimum wage,” Economic Policy Institute, Ben Zipperer and Dave Kamper
The crisis of low pay is widespread throughout the United States and will remain so until federal and state policymakers prioritize the economic hardships of low-wage workers. Even after the rapid inflation of the past 18 months and the recent unprecedented wage growth for lower-wage workers, 21 million workers are still paid less than $15 per hour.
The problem is severe for workers in the 20 states still following the stagnant and outdated federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage has not been raised in over 13 years. It is now worth less in inflation-adjusted terms than at any point since 1956. 1 In those states, 19% of workers are paid less than $15 per hour, compared with 13% of workers in the 30 states and District of Columbia. As a result, a worker in one of the 20 states with a $7.25 minimum wage is 46% more likely to make less than $15 an hour than a worker in the other 30 states or District of Columbia with higher minimum wages.
According to EPI’s Family Budget Calculator, there is no part of this country where even a single adult without children can achieve an adequate standard of living with a wage of less than $15 an hour.
With the lack of Congressional action, the federal minimum wage has lost more than a third of its value since its inflation-adjusted high point of 1968. Policymakers in the 20 states following the federal minimum should not wait for Congress to pass a minimum wage increase and begin raising workers’ wages now.
Note
1. Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. (source: EPI’s Minimum Wage Tracker).
Good decision, big institutional problem on minimum wage work-around, Angry Bear, Eric Kramer.
Well there are a lot of different min wages possible above $7.25. Likewise the dispersion of this metric among to 20 states and among the 30 states plus DC could be very high. Also, I would think that an understanding of labor participation is important. Additionally, I think that jobs that do not pay enough for a single adult to live at an “adequate standard” still can and often do serve important functions in our society. Yes, long term employment at such wages is in not in the employees’ interest, but getting work experience is and many, many lower paid jobs are taken to provide a bit “extra” for a not independent person, and to get this experience. I’ll bet a lot of the AB readership did exactly this at a point in their lives. I did.
The range in house prices, exceeds the range in minimum wages, so IMNSHO this post is low in useful economic data.
Seems like when we started talking about making $15 an hour the minimum wage it suddenly became the target wage. Didn’t impact me too much* but my sons went through a stretch (as recently as three years ago) there where people just didn’t want to pay more than that for work that pays twice that elsewhere. Could be a market aberration ~ Bend Oregon ~ but I’ve heard similar in the other hot building booms, often (not necessarily unfairly) blamed on undocumenteds.
That there are enough undocumenteds working in the trades exemplifies, in my mind’s eye, the problem with the housing and homelessness crisis’ that nobody wants to talk about: there’s not enough qualified people to build what we need, and of course capital doesn’t want to pay for it worth.
* The last year I worked in the woods ~ 1990 ~ I was paid top dollar setting chokers and hooking logs to helicopters: $15 an hour
well, the rule (iron law of economics) is that labor gets what the market will bear (which is often a not-subsistence wage).
i’d bet those places that pay more than $15/hr can’t get workers for less. yes high-school kids would work for less just to get gas money, and the very poor often make do with below subsistence because it’s better than nothing. a lot of these people work two or three jobs, because if you can only make seven dollars an hour you might get enough money by working 60 hours per week, or having the kids work, or even new moms.
i think anyone would be ashamed of themselvs trying to justify these conditions.
i also think a better answer would be government jobs paying a good wage in every community, forcing private business to raise wages to compete. but we know who owns the government.
Well, after all, cost of living ‘generally’ is going to be lower in poorer, redder states, dontchaknow. Go figure.
yep. done that. figured, that is. funny how that works.
back in the day, i went from making a dollar an hour in california to making 35 cents an hour in florida. but whitefish was fifteen cents a pound and potatoes even cheaper. though my gas heat bill was higher by a lot. so were rents.
i think it had something to do with a history of slavery holding wages down for everybody.
which is to say, if you get a raise, so will your landlord.
Having lived and worked in California all my life, I was shocked to find out what the housing prices were in Oklahoma, where my family comes from.
I have no doubt that the people are being underpaid and need more to live on, but we need a comparison that accounts for costs as well as income to determine how badly.
Y’know, the GSA does this sort of thing around the country.
General Schedule (GS) Locality Pay Map
Jane E
I am not so sure we “need a comparison.” Just look around you. Those people you see living on the streets are not there because they just like camping out.
The Democrats really failed on this issue. Early on when they controlled both the House and Senate they tried to pass a $15 minimum wage, but 8 Democratic senators voted no. They never tried again. Even a $2 an hour increase would have meant over $4000 more per year for a full time worker.
well, democrats don’t work for minimum wage.
Jim:
I am with you on that issue. It exhibits their contempt for Labor whether it was a mistake or not. How hard would it be to pass an increase of $2 or lust set it at $10.
Bill
pretty hard, apparently. thse dems don’t work for minimum wage. and then there’s Manchin.
along with local government jobs. I think a Union of low-wage workers, or even a new corporation “Labor Supply, Inc.” which would relive employers of the work of vetting, hiring and paying for “ordinary workers,” (those without special high-demand skills). Once people realized they could get a better deal by signing on with LSI Inc, they could corner the market and at least set a wage level that would at least pay for groceries and rent and health care. Of course, by then they might have some leverage in the rental market too.