The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025

https://www.epi.org/blog/the-federal-minimum-wage-is-officially-a-poverty-wage-in-2025/

by MaysonL • 1 year ago

86 55 1 year ago

davisr• 1 year ago

Shameful, especially here in Wisconsin where the minimum wage is still set to $7.25/hour. And even more shameful the tactics used by gig-companies like Uber and DoorDash to depress their own liabilities, and worker wages, even further down.

"No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

FeloniousHam• 1 year ago

I'm ambivalent about a Federal minimum wage, it's probably mostly harmless, and maybe helps people at the margin. But. No minimum wage allows small businesses to hire the unhireable (eg. teenagers), which gives them a first step on the wage ladder.

I looked up Wisconsin wage stats in Gemini[1].

Wage Bracket (Hourly) Estimated Percentage of Jobs Wage Bracket (Annual)

Under $12.29 Approximately 13% Under $25,560

$12.29 to $15.27 Approximately 13% $25,560 to $31,771

$15.28 to $18.26 Approximately 16% $31,772 to $37,983

$18.26 to $21.25 Approximately 14% $37,984 to $44,195

$21.25 to $24.23 Approximately 11% $44,196 to $50,407

$24.23 to $27.22 Approximately 10% $50,408 to $56,619

$27.22 to $30.21 Approximately 8% $56,620 to $62,831

$30.21 to $33.19 Approximately 5% $62,832 to $69,044

$33.19 to $36.18 Approximately 5% $69,045 to $75,256

$36.18 to $39.17 Approximately 4% $75,257 to $81,468

$39.17 to $42.15 Approximately 4% $81,469 to $87,680

$42.15 to $45.14 Approximately 4% $87,681 to $93,893

$45.14 and over Data not specifically itemized in this format, but represents the remaining percentage of jobs $93,893 and over

Simple competition likely drives wages well above the State mandated minimum wage.

[1] "create a distribution table of the population to wages of workers in Wisconsin"

anonym292• 1 year ago

The pace with which the cost of living is rising is staggering. Heck, I remember the fight for 15 (referring to the campaign to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/h) a decade ago, but I don't see how someone could live on that, $2600/mo pre-tax income, in most of the country these days either. That's like 60%+ of your gross income on rent for a typical 1br across large swaths of the country, no?

the__alchemist• 1 year ago

The way this usually works out is roommates.

nozzlegear3• 1 year ago

I don't see how someone could live on that, $2600/mo pre-tax income, in most of the country these days either. That's like 60%+ of your gross income on rent for a typical 1br across large swaths of the country, no?

Probably really location dependent, like you said. I could definitely live on that where I live in rural Iowa; the mortgage for my 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house is less than $800 per month.

anonym292• 1 year ago

I assume you bought years ago at a low interest rate - please correct me if I'm wrong.

What do you figure the mortgage would be at today's price and interest rates?

chriscrisby• 1 year ago

How can anyone justify paying a high school kid who works part time most of the year a living wage. Not every job is meant to be a “living wage”.

marcus_holmes3• 1 year ago

How are you supposed to live if your job doesn't pay you a living wage?

sarchertech3• 1 year ago

The OP is specifically talking about high school students who are supported by their parents.

nullc8• 1 year ago

By living with friends or family, state assistance, and/or charity.

How are you supposed to live on 0 wage? Inevitably for some people that's what a minimum wage means: There is some work with some wage less than a minimum for which this person in this place could work, and they can't because of the minimum. Among other considerations any minimum wage has to balance that harm vs the harm for people who would be paid fairly more with a higher minimum wage.

It's also just the case that an extremely small portion of the public makes minimum wage, and since they're exceptional each of their situations are exceptional in its own way.

toomuchtodo6• 1 year ago

Easily. If the job cannot pay a living wage, it should not exist. We'll get there with structural demographics eventually (pushing up wages as labor supply diminishes as the fertility rate continues to rapidly fall), but it would be nice if we could not make so many people suffer in the interim ("time value of life"). Several states are removing child labor restrictions due to "labor shortages," for example. So, you have to starve the beast of underpaid labor.

We have the means, it's a choice. We could make a better choice, but if we don't, demographics dynamics will make it for us.

https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://joshbersin.com/2023/09/why-we-are-entering-a-secular...

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2020/09/18/the-great-...

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-employers-hiring/101730

https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attac...

d4mi3n• 1 year ago

High school kids don't work full time year-round.

If they are working full time through the year, they likely aren't spending much time in school and whatever work they are doing should bring in enough money for them to not be homeless, starving, or unable to meet other basic needs like healthcare.

I'd further note that the government and it's taxpayers pay the toll regardless of whether or not we increase the minimum wage. We just end up paying the cost elsewhere in a way that's dollar for dollar a lot less efficient (policing, ER visits, homeless shelters, etc.)

Arguments aside, what do you feel would be an appropriate minimum wage for someone working a job in the US? What factors go into that number? In what situations does that number change?

Larrikin• 1 year ago

Why should age matter at all if the person is doing the exact same job? Children already get paid less than minimum wage when there are jobs they legally can't do. The owner of the McDonald's I worked at in high school loved hiring 14 and 15 year olds because he could make them do every single menial job there except cook the food. They were run ragged same as the rest of us for the bonuses only the manager got.

platevoltage2• 1 year ago

here we go. Fine. make a law that adults have to be paid a living wage so that this talking point can disappear for good.

sarchertech3• 1 year ago

I don’t think it’s that easy. Creating multiple classes of workers with different wage floors creates new problems.

It’s also possible that the increased artificial demand for high school labor pushes their average wage to just below the adult minimum wage.

meltyness• 1 year ago

The only response I want to read about this starts with, "Historically, the lurch and jerk of technical progress, paranoia manufactured by ubiquitous media, government financial overreach, and heavy-handed speculative projections shattered the ability of many organizations to establish meaningful turnover and generational handoff ..."

jrflowers2• 1 year ago

How can anyone justify paying a high school kid who works part time most of the year a living wage.

Pretty easily. Once you consider how productive an even below-average worker is in the US, the idea of running a business so poorly that you can’t make bank while paying somebody a living wage seems pretty embarrassing.

While the “teenager” line is often vilified as a sign of unfettered greed (which it is), in my experience it’s been more of the respite of folks with so little business sense that it boggles the mind that they would be an employer.

I personally can’t imagine saying “I am incapable of producing much more than seven dollars per hour with the help of the time, body and mind of a person that I interviewed and selected to work at my business” out loud with a straight face, there are some folks that gleefully proclaim stuff like that as if they’re talking about something other than themselves

nullc8• 1 year ago

High average productivity can just as well come from aggressively not employing anyone that doesn't drive the revenue per head-count forward. I suggest that the below-average workers productivity is inflated by aggressive fat cutting-- and that we'd be better off as a society if we made more room for novice and trainee employees. But this has gone off-topic of the subject of minimum wage because very few people actually receive minimum wage in the US.

I personally can’t imagine saying “I am incapable of producing much more than seven dollars per hour with the help of the time, body and mind of a person that I interviewed and selected to work at my business”

An inexperienced new employee can easily be a net loss for a long time as they mess up more stuff than they produce while they learn. This isn't tolerated by a lot of modern business philosophy so the jobs and industries that work like this increasingly just don't exist in the US.

notjulianjaynes• 1 year ago

Most minimum wage workers are not teenagers https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-workers/

maxerickson• 1 year ago

I expect you mean requiring a living wage. Or do you really think there are 0 high school kids that are capable of earning more?

apercu2• 1 year ago

You mean, how do we further exploit minors?

Send ‘em to the mines and the meat packing plants for $7/hr because they’re only kids!

blululu• 1 year ago

Inflation sucks but it is a basic reality. As a request to policy folks out there please consider advocating the minimum wage have some connection to local CPI. A demand for a $xx/hr minimum globally is going to be both too high and too low and irrelevant in a few years time either way. This should not be an issue that needs to be relitigated every 5-10 years just to get back to where we started. The minimum should be set to reflect a basic standard of living in a given locale and not an arbitrary number.

idle_zealot2• 1 year ago

This is obviously good policy, but is effectively impossible because a large contingent of policymakers don't want there to be a minimum wage. In a past era they could trade votes for an $X/hr minimum in exchange for something they wanted, confident that any law they helped pass would be effectively obsolete in a few years anyway, while what they bargained for would live on. A proposal for a scaling minimum wage would never pass. This isn't just a dig at Republicans, by the way, there are plenty of fiscal conservatives among the Dems too.

jsbisviewtiful2• 1 year ago

It's also a good way to turn the 50 states into a collection of poor vs well-off locations, where being born into one means you are possibly trapped there due to having no money to leave. That plan invites the poorest states to simply fall apart - and like what's already happening: invites the richer states to pick up the burden of paying for states with bad (usually republican) economic policies.

SimianSci• 1 year ago

America is rapidly falling behind its peers. Its been well understood that taking care of your people is the key to prosperity, yet politically we seem to be more worried about ensuring the rich live their lives of leisure at the expense of our working class.

The bare minimum standard we should hold ourselves to is that a 40 hour work week should be able to put a roof over your head and food on your table. The fact that the minimum wage is continuously supressed is absurd.

RiverCrochet• 1 year ago

The bare minimum standard we should hold ourselves to is that a 40 hour work week should be able to put a roof over your head and food on your table

Absolutely, but it seems to me that as long as companies have A) the option to not hire people and/or B) ways to side-step minimum wage with non-US labor, minimum wage won't achieve that goal for everyone. It will enable the goal for a few and the rest will have a 0 hour work week and a harder time getting any type of job.

But there's the other side of the question - why is a roof over your head and food on your table getting so expensive? That's what needs to be addressed. High rent/housing/food costs prevent cheap labor. There's no point in raising minimum wage to $20/hr if the price of food and rent keeps going up.

The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025

Related Stories