One in Three U.S. Workers Are Earning Less Than $15 an Hour
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Honestly, even statewide minimum wage is fairly ridiculous. Within the state of New York there are counties with a living wage as low as $13.23 (Wyoming County) and as high as $21.77 (New York County). This is a "problem" to be solved at the county level exclusively.
Who can afford the waste, who will be wanting? While that's probably not the point I think it's a very convenient bonus to many people advocating for a federal minimum.
Big companies like Amazon can afford the waste and small businesses will be left wanting.
I don’t think this data has caught up with wage increases after the labor shortage.
Well this is HN, so I'd hazard to guess that most people don't know many people who take those jobs.
>They could just post that to look like they’re not avoiding hiring.
Seems like a conspiracy theory to me unless there's some sort of evidence that they're ignoring applications.
And achieve what, exactly?
1. Pretend like you're hiring staff
2. ???
3. Profit
What is happening in step 2 that is leading to step 3? And more importantly, why does step 2 need step 1?
Remember demand has kept up despite higher prices and in many cases reduction to quality of service. Doing the same thing is the natural state for a business operator, even if they want to hire they may not have time to interview. There is no benefit to taking signs down in that case when every other restaurant has them up.
In particular I’d like to see this normalized by the median rent for a one bedroom apartment. Looking at the map, most of the lower paid folks live in cheaper areas, which is to be expected.
I would guess that $15/hr is above the "living wage" in a majority of counties in the United States. Perhaps your perspective is skewed by your experience in expensive urban areas?
Perhaps your perspective is skewed by thinking this is the 1990's still.
Their overall methodology is located here: https://livingwage.mit.edu/resources/Living-Wage-Users-Guide...
Edit: age matters for a number of reasons, as employees gain more experience they become more valuable and take on more responsibility. Also the amount of money a person needs as they get older usually increases (care for children and possibly their own parents etc). Earning minimum wage at 21 is very different than being 41 on minimum wage. Often businesses hire young staff as an investment, they are untrained and at first add no value and this is reflected in the wages. However as they progress they earn more (certainly true of me I started on a really low salary , barely minimum wage).
It's kind of crazy how much liberty authors of studies have these days to speak outside the scope of their study. This explanation is handwavey at best or downright fraught if you actually look into the history of said rules.
Of course there are non-racist reasons for both the minimum wage and gun control! But these “taint by association with racism” arguments are always deployed in an extremely selective way. The Senate is racist because it supposedly was to help slave holding states (which isn’t true) but gun control isn’t racist even though it was definitely popularized in response to the perceived threat of armed Black men.
No one else has to live in your mental box.
There's are hundred of thousands of possible factors that go into paying people in different economic areas with vastly different policies, laws, costs of living, etc. Not even including non-economic based policies that have had unintended effects on the economies of each individual state. Saying that "everybody should make 'x' dollars per hour" is so narrow-minded to me, but I'd welcome someone to help me understand. If you raise minimum wage up from (say) $8 to $15, what happens to everybody else in the state - do their wages go up by $7, or is their labor now worth $7 less because of this?
Is this just a new phenomenon where everybody thinks their opinion is fact, and critical thinking is taking the backseat to what people "feel" is right - completely disregarding any other factors that might make the situation as a whole _worse_ than before?
My neighbor having more does not mean I have any less.
It took me at least 5 years as a software engineer with a CS degree to reach that per year in South Africa.
I understand cost of living adjustments etc etc but $15 per hour in SA would help so many people dramatically. We have a huge number of citizens living below the poverty line.
For perspective, our minimum hourly wage is 23.19ZAR per hour which is roughly 1.49USD.
https://income-inequality.info/
Earning $30k in the US puts one in the top 5% of the world's population with respect to income (adjusted for PPP).
It tells me that rent for a 1 bedroom in Johannesburg is around $440 USD per month. In Denver, a mid level American city, you would be paying $1790 usd.
Also keep in mind that if you want health insurance in the US, you might end up spending $5k-$10k for just the insurance, getting care for anything beyond a yearly checkup is going to cost more.
We also have a very high income tax rate. Up to something like 45% depending on your level of income.
If I for instance saved 10% of my salary vs someone earning comparatively the same in the US, I would have far less buying power in the world in general.
Overseas holidays are something very few can afford. Spending ZAR overseas is rough.
Even within the states there are massive discrepancies. $15/hr in San Francisco probably means you are on the edge of homelessness. Meanwhile that same pay in the southeast might be enough for a modest life.