Posted on 12/30/2023 8:00:03 PM PST by SeekAndFind
According to an analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the minimum wage does not suffice to pay for a typical set of living expenses in any state of the United States.
Hawaii, Georgia and Utah, where the living wage gap exceeded $10 per hour, fared the worst.
While Georgia and Utah only apply the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, Hawaii has a substantially higher minimum wage of $12 - once more to be increased to $14 on Jan. 1, 2024. Yet, the extremely high living costs on the inland group have created the highest living wage gap in all of the country this year.
However, as Statista's Katharina Buchholz details below, in general, states which stuck to the federal minimum created above average gaps.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Out of the 21 states which had a living wage gap above $8 this year, all except Hawaii were on the federal minimum wage.
As states on the federal rate generally don't increase their minimum wage, employees' earnings were not adjusted in 2022 and 2023 for high inflation rates, causing living wage gaps to open up even more. While before the cost-of-living crisis, only three states saw gaps of more than $8 per hour, this increased to 21 in 2023 exclusively due to federal minimum wage states. Virginia was the state exiting the highest bracket, reducing the living wage gap from more than $9 to just over $7 by introducing a state minimum wage that marked the first increase to the rate in 11 years. The change started in 2021 and Virginia's minimum wage will reach $15 in 2026.
Some states on the East Coast that like Virginia include or are in the vicinity of major cities also had higher wage gaps but none exceeding $8. New York saw a gap of $7.26 per hour this year, while Florida had a gap of $6.72 and Maryland of $6.36 despite these states mandating higher minimum wages.
The smallest gaps could be found in Washington, Vermont and Maine, where cost of living remained below metropolitan rates and minimum wages of $13 and above kept at least some pace with inflation.
To calculate the living wage, typical housing, living, childcare and healthcare expenses were calculated for the respective areas.
The real “minimum wage” is zero.
Ask the geniuses at MIT to determine what the prevailing minimum wage would be without 40 million illegals. Wages have been stagnant since **1974**
Wrong. Minimum wage is anything above zero. Don’t be stupid.
I guess we need a maximum wage and a maximum net profit on all businesses. Then we can get rid of the minimum wage.
“what the prevailing minimum wage would be without 40 million illegals. Wages have been stagnant since **1974**”
Agreed-
The real Minimum Wage is zero - Horseshiiite -
Nobody works for Zero - Slaves would cost you more than “Zero”. The only zero wage labor would be your own under-age family members.
If your “business” can only survive on paying high school kids $10 an hour, better get another business. Not many kids these days, and they sure as shiite won’t work for $10 an hour when they can make 10 times that with an Ebay site, a YouTube Channel, or any of the other Skill/Talent/Creative online work setups.
FWIW - More fighting-age Illegal Men crossed the border than US babies were born.
Is there any job paying the state’s minimum hourly wage? Here in the 2nd most impoverished district in the USA, located in northeast Kentucky, I don’t know of any company that is paying the minimum wage. My young daughter has worked at several places and the prevailing wage is $15/hr. Only one small grocery store was less than the $15.
True. There are many, many people whose labor is worth $0 (or less than $0).
A minimum wage makes it illegal for anyone whose labor is not worth more than the minimum wage to work. If my labor is not worth more than the minimum wage, why would anyone want to hire me?
True. Unpaid internships and volunteer positions.
“Then we can get rid of the minimum wage.”
Maybe an education on what minimum wage really means might be in order. Minimnum wage is wht you can get away with toi payu the kids that wrap packages at Christmas at your store, deliver neewspapers, or any other non-entry level position. It’s not to weet the whistle of a possible CEO, it’s there to fill positions and do work that people that may become the CEO won’t have time to do if they are hired. And as long as companies are using minimums to lure entry level, they will have a steady supply of failing employees.
I worked for Intel in Dupont Washington before I went back to work for the govenment in the 1990’s and I heard a major exec for them make this comment about losing employees:
“I can’t believe the lack of the loyalty of the minimum wage employee.”
And this is what makes the minimum wage unrealistic. Don’t pay them what you can get by with, pay them consistent with what they’re doing and what they are worth to the company.
wy69
After I read in January 2022 that “Congress created the Affordable Connectivity Program, a new long-term, $14 billion program, with “new ways to qualify for the Affordable Connectivity Program such as: receiving WIC benefits or having an income at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines [levels],” then I decided to investigate some of this growing dependency upon government (which is to be obeyed except when in conflict with the Bible).
Which dependence, among other things, fosters increasing assent to government support of perversions of what God instituted (including innocent life, as with the unborn, being protected versus at least 20% of pregnancies ending in murder by abortion, and with male and female being biological terms, and only these two being sexually joined, only in marriage, versus fostering fornication and essentially requiring affirmation of homosexual unions, despite the profound negative effects on individuals and society of fornication, in health, lives, souls and money (extensive documentation).
Note that about the time of this writing, the national debt stood at over 29 trillion dollars (1-15-22 [31.5 in summer of 2023]) and rising, yet partly due to Covid-19 and supererogatory measures (both are judgments from God) to control it, 61% of Americans paid no federal income taxes in 2020.
Reading “200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines” promoted me to investigate that first, and which means, for instance, that while for a household of three the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) would be $21,960 yet 200% of the FPL would be $43,920 (compared with $29,646 last year), and would qualify that household for $30 a month discount for high-speed Internet and “eligible households also can receive a onetime discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer or tablet from participating providers if the consumer contributes $10 to $50 toward the purchase price.” “The $14.2 billion Affordable Connectivity Program is just a part of roughly $65 billion to improve access to high-quality, high-speed internet access contained in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signed into law Nov. 15.” (https://www.aarp.org/home-family/personal-technology/info-2021/fcc-subsidy-helps-broadband-internet-access.html)
However, as reported here, the official poverty measure is based on cash income only, which fails to capture all the resources available to a family including tax credits and in-kind transfers. Also, the official measure of family resources is biased due to under-reporting of certain types of income that are commonly received by those with low reported income.
What are Federal Poverty Guidelines/Levels (FPL)?
The Federal Poverty Guidelines are federally set “poverty lines” that indicate the minimum amount of annual income that an individual / family needs to pay for essentials, such as housing, utilities, clothing, food, and transportation. These guidelines, also called Federal Poverty Levels (FPLs), are based on the size of a household and the state in which one resides. FPLs are the same in 48 of the 50 states. The two exceptions are Alaska and Hawaii, which have higher Federal Poverty Levels due to the higher cost of living. As an example, in 2021, the annual FPL for an individual in Alaska was $16,090, in Hawaii it was $14,820, and in the remainder of the states it was $12,880...
More at link.
It's not supposed to, it's just a starting point.
If your “business” can only survive on paying high school kids $10 an hour, better get another business
On its face that seems to be a ridiculous statement. The high school kid making $10 is the same as the retiree making $10, forced back to work because inflation is eating them alive.
Artificial wages like 15/hr for a burger flipper do nothing except fuel inflation.
Jobs will disappear and businesses will founder. Already, fast food places are seeing a decline because their offerings have reached a breaking point of affordability. $16 for a big mac meal? Really? Double from 5 years ago [or so]?
Partly fueled by higher wages and partly by inflated food prices[which are partly inflated by their higher labor costs].
These new “minimum” wages are creating a floor of unsustainability. You are not going to roll them back and poor folks will find they are just as poor as before.
The living is wage is what you earn when you work hard and the the harder you work with goals in mind the better you do.
A starting job you don’t live on you learn on. If you never learn you shouldn’t earn.
Minimum wage is not and has never been a living wage.
One needs two to three wage earners per household to live on minimum wage.
Always been this way. How did people become so stupid?
By relying on their tender feelings instead of their brains.
Why would it be an employer’s responsibility to provide a “living wage”? What about the majority of people who create NO jobs and pay no wages at all?
People without enough income to live by themselves should go in with roommates or family to share costs, or join a commune. Might be a good idea to develop skills that command higher compensation.
15 living in Boston on minimum wage always with 1 to 3 roommates and we shared bedrooms too.
In this day little children have their own bedrooms and sometimes bathrooms or a children’s bathroom. Kids have no cognitive flexibility now because they are not required to flexibility. No pain childhoods mean very painful adulthoods.
In many cases, American businesses must also compete with foreign workers who get paid much less than our minimum wage.
Also, general-purpose robotics and machine learning will soon be replacing human workers, starting where there is the highest return on investment.
And robots will work longer hours and with greater efficiency than humans.
We are living in interesting times.
I call BS. Entry level HS dropouts are making over minimum wage in this economy.
If they want truth… it’s just the opposite. Increasing these wages drove up costs and even congress approved themselves a raise although they are not highly regarded as the representatives of the self governed citizens.
Any time a democrat starts talking about living wages, it is the union democrat money laundering they are really referring to.
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