Picture a minimum-wage worker. What do you see? My worker is a woman, a girl really. Her hair is in a ponytail underneath a red visor, and she’s working a fast food job after high school to pay for her car insurance, the occasional brand-name pair of jeans, and Saturday night movies with friends. I probably have this view of minimum-wage workers because they reflect my own experience as a minimum-wage worker, to a point. These low-paying, zero-benefit (unless getting even cheaper fast food during a shift can be considered a benefit) jobs are how I slowly made my way through high school and college, starting with my first job at Orange Julius making $4.75 an hour in 1994 (the federal wage was $4.25, but Oregon has always been a little ahead of the curve). By the time I graduated college in 2002, I was making $8.25 an hour at a hotel in Eugene and the federal minimum wage had risen to $5.15 per hour. The job was not always my only source of income: in high school, I was subsidized by my parents, and then by student loans and other financial aid during college. It’s a solidly middle-class picture of minimum-wage work, because I was raised solidly middle class.
A lot of folks like me think of minimum wage work as temporary—a rite of passage for young adults to endure until they graduate college and get a “real job.” There’s another layer to my story, though. In the eight years from my first minimum wage job to my last, I went to four schools, lived in five states, got married and divorced, dropped out of school to pay family bills, and waged an ongoing battle with depression and anxiety. I also incurred a lot of credit card debt.
As I began to research this article, I was flabbergasted as I read more about the realities for today’s low-wage workers, even though my own experience didn’t reflect the minimum-wage-worker archetype that was so deeply embedded in me. Here’s what I know now:
- Nearly 55% of people paid at or below minimum wage are aged 25 or over, and nearly 70% of minimum-wage workers work 35 or more hours per week.
- A minimum wage increase would have the greatest impact on women and people of color. 4.5 million single parents would benefit.
- More than 11 million children have parents who would receive a pay raise if the minimum wage were increased. That’s 11 million more kids whose parents would be a little less worried about making ends meet. Minimum wage workers are sometimes teenagers, but, by the millions, they are also parents, spouses, and caretakers. And unless you work to develop a real and lasting relationship, your favorite barista or the guy at the drive-through probably won’t tell you how hard things are at home.
- Nowhere in the United States can someone working full-time earning the federal minimum wage rent a 2-bedroom apartment at fair market rent without spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
- If the federal minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, it would now be $10.67 an hour. But if the federal minimum wage had kept pace with overall economic growth in the US since the 1960s, it would be $21.16 an hour, or $44,012.80 a year.
- Tipped workers (not just waitresses, but hotel workers, coffee slingers, etc.) are paid a federal minimum of just $2.13, forcing them not only to perform uncompensated emotional labor, but also to rely on the mood of their patrons, and not the quality of their work, to make ends meet. This wage hasn’t increased since 1991, when a gallon of gas cost about $1.14.
Margot Dorfman, CEO of the US Women’s Chamber of Commerce, points out that: “We all lose when American workers are underpaid … When businesses don’t pay a living wage all society pays. We pay through poverty and needless disease, disability, and death from inadequate healthcare. We pay as women struggle to put food on the table. We pay as businesses and communities suffer economic decline.” A host of business leaders and researchers have pointed out that raising the minimum wage makes good economic sense. And in addition to raising the quality of life for millions of families and children, raising the federal minimum wage would also help close the massive gender gap in pay.
An increase in minimum wage isn’t a panacea, but the bottom line is that people who work a full day, a full week, full time should earn a living wage, they should earn enough to afford safe housing, healthy food, and quality health care. The CEO of Walmart earns about $11,000 an hour. The CEO of Yum! Brands (owner of KFC) earns less than his “peer group” at just $6,200 per hour, while the CEO of McDonald’s earned around $7,400 an hour in 2016. Contrast this with the early church whose members “had all things in common…and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44).
Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate that would bring the federal minimum wage closer to inflation-adjusted levels and increase wages for tipped workers. It’s not enough, but it’s a start. Here’s the House version, and here’s the Senate’s. Whether or not you support this particular bill, I hope you’ll take a moment to call your congressional representatives to let them know that, as a follower of Jesus, you want every person to have the opportunity to earn a living wage.
Sarah Withrow King is the Deputy Director of Christians for Social Action, the co-director of CreatureKind, and the author of two books, Animals Are Not Ours (No Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Wipf & Stock) and Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Your Faith (Zondervan).
9 Responses
While your post should make us all ponder this issue in light of the Gospel, it nevertheless is completely one-sided in focusing solely on the wage earner. The “wage provider” is frequently a small business person who is busy juggling many costs in his or her efforts to eke out a living. Based on a minimum wage concept, many small businesspersons are themselves not making the minimum wage. Of course this is not the case for all “wage providers”, but an across-the-board increase would cover everybody. I know of many Christian business owners (albeit owning small businesses as the world measures them) who struggle regularly on how to give their workers more pay. But it isn’t easy–especially when payroll is the largest single expense, far outstripping the business owner’s net. A 10% payroll increase can virtually wipe out the bottom line. I have had a long interest and involvement in employee owned enterprises where the same people are on both sides of the equation. It frequently is an “aha” moment for those who never paid attention to the engine that produced the funds to pay wages. There needs to be a balance between owners/manager’s “take” and employee “sense of entitlement”. Our business is in a state where the minimum wage is $9.19, with no reduction for tips. It can be managed, but it often results in a pressure to hire only the most productive. That unintended result gives me pause.
Dan, thanks for sharing your experience! If you’d like to write a short article from your perspective on this issue, I’d be glad to post it. Email it to me at swking@eastern.edu.
I think business owners forget though that giving everyone more money means more demand for their product as well. That money doesn’t just disappear. It gets spent, thus increasing your revenue. If Europe can do it, so can we.
Dan,
This is not to counter or put you down. But oftentimes, if not most of the time, we are told that we should not seek a higher, livable wage because the small business owners do not have access to funds to properly pay each of their workers adequately. In fact, that is the primary reason put behind by megacorporations and others (whom we know do have enough money).
Ultimately, though, we have to ask who is playing the martyr already? Who is already sacrificing? It is the minimum wage worker, who can barely afford to provide for him or herself – let alone a family. In order to raise wages, yes, one would have to raise prices – but that would be across the board while more money should be coming in as more lower wage workers have more flexibility to spend.
Ultimately, I think the Christian/ethical response should be: Am I paying a living wage for my employees? If you are not, then you may need to rethink what is important in your business.
But Dan, that’s why the concept of a federal minimum wage works. When the minimum wage is raised, everyone’s playing with a level playing field– everyone, small business owners and large multinationals alike, have to pay the same rate. Your ethical small business owners doesn’t have to worry that paying a living wage will make him/her unable to compete with the larger players– on that factor (there are many others of course) the playing field will be level. And any prior “sense of entitlement” among employees has been well and thoroughly beat out of them in the years since ’09, so no worries there.
I was struck by, not how little we pay to the average worker in this country, but rather how little we pay in relationship to what was paid after the March on Washington. Many forget that the purpose of that event was JOBS and freedom along with closing the income gap that was far less than we suffer from today. In 1963 the goal was to get a $2/hour minimum wage passed. Today, an equivalent number would be over $13./hour. The sad reality is that through a variety of clever maneuvers, the hourly wage earner has been left further and further behind. While I understand the plight of small businesses, I also understand that keeping the minimum wage artificially low solves nothing and in fact creates more problems by far. Basic economics – higher paid employees spend more money and when more money is spent, the economy grows and provides more opportunity for all as opposed to just a privileged few. I am a manager at a large provider of contact (call center) services and my employees start at minimum wage for a very challenging job. The majority of my employees, who work full time have either a second job to make ends meet or have to rely on assistance programs just to put food on the table. They are not lazy, they are just trapped in a spiral of rising debt and few options…and they are angry – very angry.
It’s a good article, but no minimum wage worker is actually taking home the gross pay so the numbers are actually even worse than stated. Every minimum wage worker is contributing to social security and medicare, and most have something deducted for income tax.
Orange Julius, huh…
I have a daughter about your age who worked at one of those early in her wage earning life, too.
Playing something other than the Devil’s advocate, but looking at this issue from a bit more macro perspective, the problem of inadequate wages feels to me like so many other problems: the origin is in the human heart; one of which we all have. Capitalism, in this respect at least, is a little like the modular system (aka flexible scheduling) that I experienced in high school. For a handful of students who were either (or both) naturally gifted students OR good organizers and hard workers this system proved to be a success of no small magnitude. For the other 90% of the students who did not have these particular attributes the modular system was not so kind.
System…
That is what stands out to me.
We have been raised in a society that feeds every naturally depraved appetite we have to want MORE or CHEAPER or…
I have never been poor or underprivileged myself, but I’ve known folks who were during the season of life when our paths crossed. Without exception, every one of them was as sick as I. People with almost nothing want more. People with almost everything want more. Wanting more is a sickness that capitalism is designed to feed upon; that is what gives it its lifeblood.
Other economic systems no doubt do also, but I’ve never been a part of anything but Das Kapital. Trickle Down would work just fine if Jesus was in charge of what got trickled down. Sadly, and again from my admittedly limited experience, the people who are in charge don’t seem to bring quite the same attitude to the process as Jesus would.
The sickness we have is so profound that I don’t think anything short of an act by the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council and two minutes of our earth time will correct it.
“People of Earth, your attention, please. This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system. And regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.”
Maybe Jesus was thinking about Keynes’ memorable quote when he said that we would always have the poor with us. Keynes said, “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” And, to me anyway, that belief is not only astounding, it is just plain ridiculous.
May God give us grace to be content in ourselves with what we have and never content until others have what they must have in order to thrive as humans.
So says The Dad
I am a Christian business owner and in my particular case I pay above market salaries and have enjoyed wonderful success but my employees are on the higher end of the skill level. I was in favor of a minimum wage especially after some Wharton venture capital wizards started to come over in favor of a minimum wage but I read a recent article by the American Enterprise Institute, which noted that in Seattle employment went down after the minimum wage was increased. That same article made a very strong case for the merits of the Earned Income Tax Credit which strikes a great balance between giving entrepreneurs the freedom and flexibility they need to compete while increasing income for lower skilled workers until this whole globalization thing works its way out. The EITC also allows us to make sure those paying higher taxes are shouldering more of the burden, but make sure that those getting the tax credit are working and learning and gaining experience and job skills while not discouraging marriage. Any dissenting opinion out there from someone more informed than me? By the way, if we talk about minimum wage we need to talk about leveling the access to quality education and vocational training. 98% of the kids in the all-white high school in my town, 10 miles west of NYC were deemed college ready. In Paterson and predominantly non-white schools just a few miles away, only 19 out of about 900 high school graduates were deemed college ready. Somewhere in that crowd was an entrepreneur that could have created lots of jobs, a scientist who could have cured cancer or just people who could contribute and live a decent life with a measure of hope and dignity. Minimum wage and meaningful education reform have to be linked in my mind. I am ashamed at how we allow this to happen but alas only so many hours in one day. Where do we even start?