minimum wage raised to $5.85
I remember getting my first job when I was 14 - the position was as a cashier at a local tourist shop. I lied and said I was 15, knowing that they wouldn’t want proof, since I was being paid under the table. At that time (1990) minimum wages was $4.25 I believe. I was offered $5 an hour, without any taxes being taken out. For a 14 year old, this was a sweet deal!
That was…eek, 17 years ago. As I’ve aged, grown smarter, and developed more skills, I’ve made myself more attractive to employers, which is now why I get paid a lot more than I did back in 1990. Good thing too, because the current minimum wage (which was just raised) is only $5.85 per hour.
I’ll say it again in case you didn’t hear me. The current minimum wage, in America, in the year 2007, is $5.85 per hour, and that’s after a recent 75 cent increase.
$5.85 per hour.
$46.80 per day.
$234 per week.
$12,168 per year.
I made more money blogging last year than some people in this country did for hard, back breaking labor. Yes, for sharing my opinion online, in the comfort of my air conditioned house, I made more money than the person who made my hamburger at McDonald’s, the janitor who cleans my office each night, or the cashier who rings up my groceries each week.
Could you live on minimum wage? Are you living on the minimum wage? Find out for yourself if you can by Jobacle.com Minimum Wage Challenge during the week of August 20th. Live on $5.85 per hour for a week. Give yourself $234 (and that’s a pre tax figure, so I’m being generous) for the week and get gas, buy food, pay your bills, and hope for the best. Hopefully your kids don’t get sick that week, or you’ll need to plan to pay a copay and a prescription out of that $234.
You can find out more details on the Jobacle blog. Visit the Working Podcast while you’re there for great tips on how to vault yourself into a better paying career.
*Edited to add: The minimum wage has 2 planned increases over the next 2 years. On 7/24/08, it will go up to $6.55. On 7/24/09, it will go up to $7.25.
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OMG it only went to 5.85? I heard it was being raised and there was a talk of going higher for some reason. Our economy is sucking pretty bad and this makes me sad to even think about. I know that I could not live on minimum wage.
Thank goodness it’s being raised. In Wyoming they go with the national minimum wage, so people have been living off of $5.15/hr. That small increase will affect so many households…
I had a minimum wage part-time job in high school. I made $800 for an entire three months. Housekeeping at a motel. Ugh.
While the minimum wage week is a great propaganda ploy for raising the wage even higher, many surveys show that the percentage of minimum wage earners that actually have to deal with the things on your list (prescriptions, rent, bills, etc) is pretty low. Mostly because nearly all minimum wage earners are under the age of 18 and as such most likely live with their parents. And I gotta tell you, for 234 a week in my high school years, I coulda done a lot of things. Or I could go work at Walmart and get paid several dollars more… To bad their so evil… or not.
I disagree. There are many adults supporting children in this country who are the working poor. And I’d like to see a high school student work 40 hours a week to earn that $234. When do they go to school? Or study?
Hey Colleen, I was a School Bus Driver in Southwestern Pa, I only drove around 4 hours per day, but your earnings on PPP exceeded what I earned in an entire year and then there is the fact that we also didn’t have any health coverage.
I referred to it as a labor of love, because its not a job anyone wants to do that can’t stand the kids, and I did truly love the job.
Great post and I’m glad they finally got around to raising. The Corporate CEO’s with the lobbyists don’t want it raised. Morgan Spurlock did an episode of his show “30 days” on FX where he lived for a month on minimum wage and it was brutal.
And there are starving children in Ethiopia, so our overweight children better eat their food! I challenge you to find one person you know who is over the age of 18 that actually works for minimum wage. I can’t think of one. In fact, I can’t think of any one adult that I know that makes less than $6.50. I’m not saying that $6.50 is much better, but in this case, those people are college students and really only part-time anyways.
I know many adults who work for minimum wage. It’s not that hard to find them here in Florida.
In Iowa they just raised minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, but that’s still not enough. I barely get by with all my bills and I make almost $10 an hour. A lot of people don’t realize just how much things truly cost. It’s really sad.
I don’t think that it’s easy to live on $5.85 or even $8-9 an hour, but I really think people blow it out of proportion. A free market/capitalist society like ours runs on supply and demand. Why shouldn’t the labor force work on the same principles? If there are hundreds of thousands of people who will work at Taco Bell for $5.85, why should they have to pay more?
Last year, our minimum wage in Arkansas was raised to 6.25. Not great, but certainly better than a lot of places. By the way, if anyone thinks adults with families don’t work min. wage jobs, they need to get out of their bubble and walk around the real world for awhile. When my husband passed away, I had to take a min. wage job. I was 53 years old. Tell me again how adults don’t work for that wage? You do what you have to do to pay bills and survive. Sometimes, there just isn’t a choice when the needs are urgent.
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People should not be trying to live on min wage. Its a starting point. Meaning, you move on with your life or get an education. But but I cant afford the time and effort and money to go to school and get at least a cert. Oh? Last I looked this country was all about giving money to the poor for such things. Raising the min wage only HURTS the economy. WHY? Because it disrupts businesses and causes them to adjust prices so that someone can get an extra 70 cents per hour. WOW! yeah, thats really going to help out with getting ahead in life. What it WILL do, is cause employers to adjust cost of doing business that will trickle down to EVERYONE. Negating your 70 cent raise.
Stupidity in this country never ceases to amaze me.
I don’t think anyone tries to live on minimum wage long term. People don’t say, yeah, poverty rocks - let’s do this forever! But shit happens. Bad times occur. It’s not stupidity, it’s called life.
Consider yourself blessed if you are making a good living.
You’ve also got to consider the location of a lot of the adults working minimum wage jobs. I know it was frustrating for me living in a state where the unemployment rate is very high, and I could only find a a temp job making $9 an hour. Thank goodness hubby has a very good income. When I got laid off from that job, I went into business for myself because I absolutely could not find a job anywhere around here that paid more than $6 an hour. I’ve been there. I’ve worked $6/hr jobs before, and I could barely pay my student loans off that. $234 a week is just enough to cover my gas and groceries much less bills. You also have to keep in mind I live in an area where the cost of living is much lower, and there’s no way in hell I could make it off minimum wage.
Gah, minimum wage here in Nova Scotia is now up to $7.60/hour and goes up twice a year lately.
Wow! I guess our minimum wage here in Canada which sits at $7.10 and hour isn’t acutally that bad!
read the book “getting nickel and dimed in america”…it will open you eyes. the author did just what you are proposing, lived on minimum wage jobs.
In the real world, if you want to get an education, it means several years of schooling. Even if you’re given money to go to school, who pays the rent, the utilities, the gas in your car, the groceries, the tires your vehicle needs, the tags and insurance, your medicines if you need them, your doctor bill, your children’s needs? People are making difficult choices, and sometimes the choice is: Work at min. wage and hope it goes up a little so your children don’t have to live under a bridge or in your car.
I’m doing a lot better now, thank God. But it’s not because it’s easy. I don’t have young children to support. My heart breaks for working mamas who are struggling against hope all over the country to just make a living. “Oh, just go get an education and you can do better.” Not as easy as it sounds. The day to day struggles prevent it. Anyone who thinks poverty in this country isn’t real should yank their heads out of the sand and walk in the shoes of those who live it daily. You’d slit your wrists in a month.
I live in Hawaii where the minimum wage is like $7.25. I also work for a small business and we deal with a lot of other small businesses. Everytime the minimum wage goes up small businesses fire people. I know it’s true, I see it. You don’t just pay someone an additional 50 cents an hour. There are taxes, workers comp, social security, and other things that have to be paid. So an increase to the worker of 50 cents an hour can cost a small business a whole lot more.
Someone said the minimum wage is a starting point, that’s true. My mother had to enter the work force at 51 with zero experience. She started at minimum (at that time it was like $3.25) with 2 young kids. She worked, got more experience, made more money. Was it hard? Incredibly!! But she did it.
I changed professions at 37. I was making $75,000 a year. Quit and started fresh in a new profession - at minimum. I worked hard, I learned, and in less than 3 months had a raise. Within 1 year I was making well above minimum.
I have never had a job (and I’ve had lots) that don’t give raises. If you’re a good worker you should not be making minimum wage for long. With a market driven system, a good worker in almost any field, can command a decent wage. If you can’t, it may be time to reconsider what you’re doing.
To thatedeguy, I’d like to point out that there is a scary amount of hunger and poverty in our own nation - of children, not just homeless people. Think of minimum wage in terms of single parents trying to scrape by without the skills to get a better-paying job, with an apartment to pay rent for, and several children to clothe and feed, not to mention pay medical bills for. It’s staggering the number of children who go to bed hungry in our own country, if only the obese kids would share. lol.
It’s true we tend to compare ourselves to developing countries, but there is a HUGE gap of families living below the poverty line within our own borders. Now, I don’t know if raising minimum wage will solve the problem, but, I can hope.
A poster challenged you to find one person over 18 who works for minimum wage, indicating he does not know any. Wow. Just because you don’t know any does not make the statement true. There are thousands of adults who make minimum wage because they can’t obtain higher-paying jobs. Some people are really out of touch with reality.
Here in west virginia, you will take your minimum wage job if you’re lucky enough to get one and love it. If you wanna make the big bucks then you spend 4 years in college to make 10 bucks an hour.