Minimum Wage Facts

Posted on August 6, 2006 in Class Mailbox

Not only do they get crummy wages, they have little or no health insurance.

1 Minimum wage workers haven’t gotten a raise in nine years.

2 Yes, in America you CAN work full-time and still be poor.

3 Nine big, fat raises. That’s what [Republican] congressional leaders have given themselves while blocking attempts to raise the minimum wage.

4 Those [Republican] congressional pay raises add up to $31,600 per member per year—three times a minimum wage worker’s total annual salary.

5 In 2003, workers paid an average of $2,283 for employment-based family health insurance. That’s 20 percent of a minimum wage worker’s $10,712 full-time, full-year earnings.

6 At the current federal minimum wage rate of $5.15, a minimum wage worker has to work 11.2 hours to pay for one tank of gas.

7 The chair of the Arizona anti-increase group Jobs First actually said most minimum wage workers who are not high school students or first-jobbers are “people who are retired and say, ‘Hey, we want to do this more as a way of biding our time.’” Ask the grandma taking your order at a local fast-food place if she’s doing it for fun. And according to the Economic Policy Institute, seven of every 10 workers who would benefit from a $2.10 increase in the minimum wage are adults.

8 Even greedy Wal-Mart supports a minimum wage increase so its low-wage customers can afford to buy more stuff.

9 Many of the people we pay the least take care of the people we love the most. Home health aides caring for our elderly parents and child care workers would benefit from a minimum wage increase.

10 Most Americans—by a big margin—want the minimum wage increased. [Republican] Congressional leaders are NOT blocking the increase to please their constituents.