Could a $12 minimum wage be a magic number for food security?
When TaShira Smith of Durham, North Carolina, makes breakfast for her mother, three-year-old son, and five-year-old daughter, the typical menu is bacon and eggs. Around lunchtime, she might serve tuna sandwiches and chips—perhaps a banana. Dinner for the family might be meatloaf and mashed potatoes or spaghetti.
Smith makes $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage, preparing fast food at a Checker’s drive-in restaurant. On those earnings, feeding her family, on top of their other expenses, proves a challenge.
“Once I get a check, it’s basically gone the same day,” says Smith, who receives the maximum monthly amount of SNAP benefits but has been denied affordable housing assistance twice.
Smith, 31, has long grappled with poverty-level wages and inconsistent work scheduling that’s largely out of her control. At the time of our interview, she says she was scheduled to work about 10 hours per week, despite hoping to work full-time. She deploys strategies to stretch her food budget, like using coupons. Name brand groceries are out, and milk is increasingly a splurge. It’s heartbreaking, she says, to go to the store with her kids and say no when they ask for something special.
“But sometimes I have to because I just really can’t afford it.”
Checkers, which reports average sales of about $1.1 million annually per restaurant, “could definitely afford to pay us more,” Smith argues. Same with other workplaces where she’s...
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