Friday, January 3, 2014

The topic of our mandatory minimum wage brings maximum debate.


The New Year has brought movement in a long-time financial barometer in the United States – the mandatory minimum wage.  As of January 1, 2014, legislation took hold in 13 states and the District of Colombia, raising the minimum wage for those citizens anywhere from $7.50 in Missouri to $9.32 in Washington.  But there’s even more debate on a Federal level about raising the Fed mandatory minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, up from it’s current plateau at $7.25, where it’s sat since 2009.  Congressional Democrats and President Obama are backing the measure but it’s finding no support among the Republican-led House. 
Even though a Fed mandatory number exists, states can have their own minimum wage standards, as long as they don’t fall below the Fed level.  Right now 19 states plus District of Columbia have their own higher minimum wage legislation, and even cities and counties have the option of raising it.  The highest in the country is San Francisco at $10.74.  Washington leads the way for states with a $9.32 minimum wage, followed by Oregon at $9.10.  Vermont is at $8.73, Connecticut, $8.70, and New Jersey pays at least $8.25.  More states are expected to enact wage standard legislation.

We first saw statutory minimum wage regulations in New Zealand in 1894 and the Australian colony (not yet a state) of Victoria in 1896.  Attempts to effect wage uniformity had been present since trade unions were decriminalized during the 19th century, but this was the first time actual laws or binding agreements were on the books.  Now, such measures exist in 90% of all countries around the world, ostensibly to stop sweatshop labor and exploitation of workers.

In the United States, the Federal Mandatory Minimum Wage was created in 1938.  It rose regularly and significantly until 1968, a high point of $1.60 an hour (that is $8.56 in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars.)  But since then it has lagged behind the cost of living and inflation. 
In fact, after adjustments for inflation, the Federal Minimum Wage dropped 20% from 1967 to 2010.  In that time it has climbed from $1.40 to $7.25 an hour in real numbers, a 418% gain.  But even since the increase in 2009 it’s lost about 5.8% of its purchasing power, a huge chunk for workers and families already existing on a minimum wage income. 
The push to increase the Fed Minimum Wage comes from two groups that are unlikely allies – low wage workers, themselves, and economists.  Recently, fast food workers, rallying for a $15 an hour “living wage,” organized in about 100 cities for protests.  Similarly, WalMart workers have called attention to their inadequate wages and demanded fair wages.  While employment numbers dangle and dance, the problem of low wages was exacerbated by the recession.  As our economy started to rebound, about 60% of the new jobs created during the recovery were low-wage positions, according to a 2012 study by the National Employment Law Project.  They went on to report that a combination of unemployment and these low wages increased the national poverty rate by 3.4% during the recession, and that has not abated. 

A subsequent study by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst economist Arindrajit Dube found that an increase of the Fed mandatory minimum wage to $10.10, as proposed by some lawmakers, would lift nearly 6.8 million Americans out of poverty in the long term, or 4.6 million directly.   Other economists predict that nearly 21.3 million U.S. workers, a whopping 16.4% of the workforce, would be affected by raising the Federal minimum wage to $10.10 by July 2015.

17.8% of all wage and salary workers – about 23.2 million Americans - worked in the nation’s lowest paid jobs last year.  Of those, 4.3 million were retail salespeople 3.3. million cashiers, 2.9 million food preparers/servers (including fast-food workers) and 2.3 million waiters or waitresses.  The age split is interesting – dooming the young.  50.6% of the U.S. workers at or below the minimum wage last year were 16-24 and 20.3% were 25-34. 

This feeds the perception that minimum wage jobs are usually held by teenagers or college kids at fast food joints, where a low salary is not as much of an issue.  However, we see that’s not the case - 85.5% of those workers, according to the EPI report, are 20 or older, and therefore have full financial obligations – households to support and families to feed.  57.3% are female; and 39.4% are black or Hispanic, compared to 26.8% of the workforce as a whole.

The debate rages on whether raising the minimum wage legitimately pulls people out of poverty or hurts business and decentivizes people from seeking better careers, with the outcome of new legislation impacting millions of Americans.
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So what do you think about the Federal minimum wage?  Should it be raised to $10.10?  Or is it best left up to states to set?  Does it encourage people to seek low-level jobs and hurt business?  Or is it our social responsibility to pay a living wage? 










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