With the midterm elections just over 300 days away, nervous Democrats reeling from the Obamacare debacle are hoping a big push to raise the minimum wage will be the silver bullet that will spare them from the historic losses they suffered in 2010.
Democrats and unions are busy working to get minimum wage initiatives on state ballots in the hopes of creating an electoral “minimum wage magnet” to attract low-income, minority, and union voters to the polls.
Seven minimum wage facts, however, may diminish Democrats' high hopes.
1. Just 2.8% of American workers earn at or below the minimum wage.
The U.S. Department of Labor says 1.6 million people make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Another 2 million earn below that rate, such as restaurant servers who make tips in addition to a lower base hourly wage which, according to U.S. News and World Report, "in many cases actually puts them significantly above the minimum wage in reality, if not officially." That means in a nation of 317 million people, just 3.6 million (1.1%) make at or below the minimum wage. As a share of the U.S. workforce, just 2.8% of people working make minimum wage.
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Interesting article that purports to demonstrate that minimum wage increases is really a non issue since only 2.8 % of the workforce are paid at minimum wage ($7.25) or less. A couple of flaws with this argument. They are not taking into account the workers making $7.26 and higher. Sure, you start out at minimum wage and do a great job and get a 5% raise. Now you are at a whopping $7.61 per hour. Still far less than the $10 per hour being proposed and still far to little to live on. I'm pretty sure the low number of minimum wage workers reported in this article would be dramatically higher if the parameter was "at or near the minimum wage.
ReplyDeleteLastly, if 21 states already have minimum wage set higher than the Federal minimum, it must be working out for them.