6/5/2023 0 Comments Federal minimum wage increase![]() ![]() Historically, higher minimum wages have been found to reduce racial wage gaps. The increases have disproportionately benefited Black and Hispanic workers, the report found. The National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low-income workers, calculates that 26 million people, or about 16% of workers, have received higher pay because of all the state and local minimum wage increases since 2012, though often to less than $15 an hour. Ben Zipperer, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, estimates that four in 10 workers live in states where the minimum is set to reach $15 in the coming years. Other states on track to a $15 an hour wage floor include California, Illinois, New York and Virginia. Among them is Florida, where voters last year approved a measure raising the minimum to $15 by 2026. Eleven states have passed laws that will lift their minimum wages to $15 over time. Thirty states and the District of Columbia have adopted wage floors that exceed the $7.25 federal minimum. The Fight for $15 labor movement has organized strikes by fast food workers and has lobbied states and cities for higher minimum wages. Yet other trends have also helped drive the movement toward a $15 wage. “The $15 an hour debate,” Stevenson said, “is essentially being resolved through market forces.” ![]() Mathieu Stevenson, the CEO of Snagajob, a site for hourly workers, says a handful of restaurant chains are going so far as to offer retirement plans - he calls it the “white collarization” of blue collar jobs - as benefits once reserved for professionals are being offered to some service workers. Steven Dyme, the owner of Flowers for Dreams, said the $15 minimum made it much easier for him to staff up once the economy reopened this spring and demand for flowers, particularly for weddings, soared.ĭyme, whose company has four locations - one in Chicago, one in Milwaukee and two in Detroit - says he’s fully staffed, with 80 full- and part-time workers.Īt $15 an hour, he said, “I saw a markedly different picture in how fast we could recruit and in the experience level of workers.” “Moving out on my own was a huge goal for me,” she said. She is earning more than she did before the pandemic, when she worked part time at a flower shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for about $11 an hour. The higher pay allowed Himmel, 22, to move into her own apartment after sharing living space with her sister. In January, the company raised its minimum wage to $15. The beneficiaries are people like Maggie Himmel, who started working at the Flowers for Dreams flower shop in Milwaukee last fall for $12.50 an hour. The proportion of jobs that offer 401(k) retirement accounts, flexible scheduling, signing bonuses and other benefits has risen, too. Yet at ZipRecruiter, the number of job postings on the site that are advertising $15 an hour has more than doubled since 2019, said Julia Pollak, labor economist for the company. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculates that even by 2025, roughly 17 million workers will remain below that level. ![]() “It’s the number that those activists and workers put on the table 10 years ago, and built a movement towards.”Įven so, millions of Americans are still earning less than $15 an hour. “That number is not a coincidence,” said Aaron Sojourner, an economist at the University of Minnesota. Now, many staffing companies say $15 an hour is the level that many businesses must pay to fill their jobs. For years, and notably in the 2020 presidential race, labor advocates had trumpeted $15 an hour as a wage that would finally allow low-paid workers to afford basic necessities and narrow inequality. The change since the pandemic has been swift. And many of the unemployed, buoyed by stimulus checks and expanded jobless aid, feel able to hold out for higher pay. It is hardly the official federal minimum wage - at $7.25, that level hasn’t been raised since 2009 - but for many lower-skilled workers, $15 an hour has increasingly become a reality.īusinesses, particularly in the restaurant, retail and travel industries, have been offering a $15 wage to try to fill enough jobs to meet surging demand from consumers, millions of whom are now spending freely after a year in lockdown. WASHINGTON (AP) - The signs and banners are dotted along suburban commercial strips and hanging in shop windows and restaurants, evidence of a new desperation among America’s service-industry employers: “Now Hiring, $15 an hour.” ![]()
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