As cost increases persist and workers try to keep up, buzzwords like “poverty wage,” “minimum wage” and “living wage” are coming back into the lexicon, shaping conversations about what it means to make enough and who decides where to draw the line.
The federal minimum wage, which was last raised in 2009, stands at $7.25 an hour.
A full-time employee, working an average of 40 hours per week on minimum wage, makes $15,000 annually (which puts these workers below the poverty line in many states).
A recent study from SmartAsset found that the average American worker needs $68,499 in after-tax income to live comfortably. That works out to around $85,000 in total income––assuming a 20% tax hit.
The fact is that over a third of the total workforce (52 million Americans) makes less than $15 per hour.
The people most impacted by low wages are historically marginalized populations: women and people of color. More than half (58.7%) of minimum wage workers in the U.S. are women, 21.8% are Hispanic, 12.2% are Black and 14.4% are multiracial and/or Native.
These are the people suffering the worst sticker shock at the grocery store and the gas pump, choosing between rent and utilities. What’s more, current federal law still allows U.S. employers to pay sub-minimum wages to nearly a million workers.
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