Raise the wage

The federal minimum wage – just $7.25 an hour – hasn’t been increased in more than a decade.

It’s time to raise the minimum wage. Today, millions of Americans do arduous work in jobs that pay too little and offer too few benefits. They serve food, clean offices, care for the young and elderly, stock shelves, and deliver pizza. They work these jobs year after year while caring for children and parents, trying to save for college, and paying their bills.

But despite their best efforts, these low-wage and essential workers are falling further and further behind. The COVID-19 crisis has put them even more at risk, and the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr is locking millions – most notably women of color and single parents – in poverty.

The way we see it, if you work hard, you should earn enough to get by. That’s why new efforts by the Biden administration and Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 to help Americans recover from COVID-19 are so important.

Since it was last raised in 2009, the minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation, failed to keep up with average wages, and – most dramatically – failed to keep up with incomes of the top 1 percent and CEOs, contributing to America’s growing inequality crisis.

As a result, low-wage workers are not benefiting from economic growth and productivity. If the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity increases, it would be around $24/hr according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Just 30 years ago, the average pay gap between CEOs and workers was 59 to 1; by 2018, it had soared to 361 to 1. The average CEO at one of the top 350 firms in the US made $21.3 million in 2019, 320 times as much as the typical worker; a minimum wage worker still makes $15,080: a gap of 1,400 to 1.

Historically marginalized people, who do more than their fair share of low-wage work, would stand to benefit disproportionately from the bump. (For dramatic illustration of the disparate impact of a raise, refer to Oxfam’s map of low-wage workers in the US.)

According to the data from the Economic Policy Institute, while 27 percent of the total US workforce would benefit from the raise: 39 percent of Black and Latina women would benefit (vs. 18 percent of white men); 38 percent of African American workers would benefit; 33 percent of Latino workers would benefit; and 32 percent of women workers would benefit (vs 22 percent of men).

The bump from $290 a week to $600 a week would lift millions of families out of poverty. More than a quarter of the workforce – 40 million workers – would see a raise in wages. The pandemic has made this move even more urgent.

Excerpted: ‘Top Reasons It's Time to Raise the Minimum Wage Now’

Commondreams.org