Here we go. A nice, light, easy to digest and figure out topic after a heavy few weeks talking about the first amendment, tolerance, and intolerance. This episode will surely be a topic we all basically agree on, and have no issues to really untangle.

Oh what’s this? I’m being handed a note. It says… yes, it says “You say that like, every few episodes and it never turns out to be true.”

Ah. Well, okay yeah. That’s because today we’re talking about the minimum wage. You’ve probably seen discussion of it going around here or there: should we or should we not raise the minimum wage. The latest round of coronavirus relief almost included a provision for a $15 minimum wage, but that got nixxed so it would pass. There are… a lot of big feelings about whether or not we should increase the minimum wage and what the effects of such an increase would be.

Luckily, we’re here to provide a primer about the minimum wage, and what the arguments both for, and against, raising it are. So let’s get down to business.

State vs Federal

Before we get too far into this, we need to point out that there are two - levels - to this minimum wage conversation - the federal level and the state level.  First, there’s the federal minimum wage which essentially sets a floor below which no state minimum wage can fall.  Then there’s the state minimum wage, which can be anything the state legislature (or the voters of the state) decide they want it to be.

 

This plays into the controversy we’re going to talk about later because - like most things having to do with our government  - there is friction between those who believe the decision on a minimum wage should be left completely up to the state, and those who believe it’s the federal government’s place to ensure that all Americans can earn a living wage. 

 

And, actually, that’s a great lead-in to the history portion of the episode.

History

One of the first documented advocates of a standardized minimum wage in the United States was Samuel Gompers, founding president of the American Federation of Labor. In 1898, he published an article called, “A Minimum Living Wage” making the argument that the government should require a living wage for all workers (History). And, the idea wasn’t completely rejected.

 

In fact, Massachusetts passed its first state minimum wage law in 1912; in 1913 8 more states followed suit, and then by the end of WWI 3 more states and the District of Columbia all had minimum wage laws.

 

But things hit a little hiccup in 1923, when SCOTUS (ahh… my favorite acronym) ruled that imposing a minimum wage violated employers’ and workers’ liberty of contract under the 5th Amendment, and declared minimum wage laws invalid.  

 

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt unveiled his National Industrial Recovery Act, and the organization that would spearhead the effort, the National Recovery Administration. That act established work hour limits, and a minimum wage for workers in the private sector.  However, that act was also declared unconstitutional, again by the Supreme Court, in 1935 (Lord). However, in 1933 CT, NH, NJ, NY, OH and UT also passed minimum wage laws.

 

Then, in 1937, the Court changed its precedence in what would come to be known as “The Big Switch”. Justice Owen Roberts - much to the surprise of, well, everyone - sided with the liberal minority of justices in upholding the minimum wage law in Washington State.  This switch would prove to be crucial to the next part of the story. 

 

Jumping forward one year: Though the NIRA was essentially gutted, it did lay the groundwork for many of the provisions that would come to make up the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. At the time of the act’s passage congress found that a few employers within each industry were paying substandard wages, which was depressing overall wages for workers in those industries. Because of this, Congress argued, ⅓ of the American population was ““ill-nourished, ill-clad, and illhoused.” And so, the FLSA set a federalized minimum wage of $0.25/hour, which increased to $0.30/hour the next year, and then to $0.40 for some industries in 1940. 

 

From 1940 to 1981, the federal minimum wage increased steadily to $3.25  - with major amendments made every 5 or so years, and then a few years of subsequent increase. We hit a pause until 1989, but then by ‘91 the minimum wage had increased to $4.25, and then by ‘97 it had increased to $5.15. (Evolution, History)

 

Also in 1989, Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards act so that it applies only to businesses that do $500,000 per year in revenue, manufacture goods that will be sold across state lines, or engage in interstate commerce. 

 

And then finally, in 2009, we see the minimum wage increase to a whopping $7.25.

 

Where we are now

Right now, in 2021, the federal minimum wage still sits at $7.25.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 1.1 million working Americans were earning minimum wage or less per hour. That “less” figure comes from tipped workers like restaurant servers who for the last 30 years have had their minimum wage set at $2.13. 

 

Currently 29 states and the District of Columbia have all set higher minimum wages than are federally required. Currently, California is leading the way with a $14.00 minimum.  That being said, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee do not even have established state minimum wages. Georgia and Wyoming have set the state minimum below the federal minimum, so in all 7 states the federal minimum applies (States). 

 

Not surprisingly, to me anyway, the states with no established minimum wage - well, 4 of them: Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana - also have the highest percentages of workers earning the federal minimum or less. 3-4% of workers in each of those states are trying to make a living earning $7.25 or less per hour (Characteristics). And, in every single one of those states, the minimum wage at 40 hours per week covers about 70% of the cost of living for a SINGLE adult in that state, let alone a family with one income earner or a family of 4 with two. In fact, for single income families the number sits closer to 30% of the cost of living. That’s a 70% GAP. The only state in which the set minimum wage meets the cost of living for a single adult is Arizona, where the minimum wage is $12.00/hr.  (Divvy)

 

And that brings us squarely to the topic of “the working poor.” This is the group of people who have spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force but whose incomes still fell below the official poverty level. In 2018, that was 4.5 percent of the working population. Nearly 5% of the labor population worked for more than half a year and their incomes were still below poverty level. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018) For those of us who are bad with percentages and big numbers (liiiike me) that translates to 696,400 people in the workforce working for less than what the government defines as poverty level. Do you know what the poverty guideline in 2018 was?

$12,140 United States Dollars.

That’s for a household with a single person. For a family of four, it shoots up to $25,100, essentially assuming two of the people are working and getting a slight adjustment up. These numbers are just for the continental US, btw. The poverty line for Alaska and Hawaii are a little higher. As in, you have to make more money to get over the poverty guideline. (Office Of The Assistant Secretary For Planning And Evaluation, 2018)

 

For reference, the poverty guideline in 2021 is $12,880 for a single person household.  (Office Of The Assistant Secretary For Planning And Evaluation, 2021)

 

Just overall, one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021. Twelve percent of the people responding to the December 2020 Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey reported either sometimes or often not having enough to eat in the past seven days (compared with 9 percent before the pandemic), and about one-fifth of renters reported being behind on their rent. A whopping 45% are expected to have family resources below 200% of the poverty level. (Giannarelli et al., 2021) That is, almost half of the American households are expected to make less than $53,000 for a family of four in 2021. $53,000 before taxes. The 200% line is used as a determinant for needs based assistance, btw. So while it may sound like a lot of money in a vacuum, it’s still low enough that multiple organizations still think people making that amount will need financial assistance to afford certain services. Healthcare, for example, often employs this metric.

 

I just bring this up to highlight where the US stands right now when we talk about. The Federal Poverty level is a measurement of the minimum amount of annual income that is needed for individuals and families to pay for essentials, such as housing, clothing, food, and transportation. Making that level is literally considered the bare minimum to have basic necessities for life in the majority of America. There is no room in these calculations for emergency expenses, leisure activity, or vacations. So meeting or even doubling the poverty guidelines does not mean a life of luxury by any means. Just survival.

Why is it controversial

There has been a LOT of discussion about the minimum wage in recent months, including a try at including it in the American Rescue Package (which failed). The target most advocates are pushing for is $15, though some Republican senators like Mitt Romney have introduced a proposal that would increase the rate to $10 with some other regulation added. But, as usual, politicians and business owners can’t seem to agree on a way forward. (Make It)

 

And, raising the minimum to $15 (including for tipped workers) would increase pay for about 17 million workers in the US, which is somewhere near 11% of the currently employed population. Even raising it to $10 would affect 4.9 million workers, or around 3% of the working population (Statista). 

 

So why on EARTH is the idea of increasing the standard minimum wage of American workers CONTROVERSIAL?

ONE WOULD THINK that it would be a pretty straightforward logic chain from “hey we have a significant percentage of the population that is classified as ‘working poor,’ maybe we should adjust our pay rates.” 

 

AND, many of the financial problems of US citizens, and really, people around the world, were only exacerbated by the pandemic, and our social safety networks, such as they are, are strained to their limits and beyond.

 

So when someone floats the idea of raising the minimum wage right now, it hits a bit different than it has in the past. There’s more on the line, more desperation from the lowest income households. And, there’s a deep level of stress on the part of business owners (especially small business owners) who are worrying about how to keep their companies ALIVE, let alone increasing pay rates for their employees. This, of course, means that the conversation is automatically emotionally charged, and like everything else, appears to be polarized:

 

If you’re for raising the minimum wage, you don’t care about small businesses and think that “burger flippers” should be paid the same as paramedics. If you’re against raising the minimum wage, you think profit margins are more important than human lives, and think everyone in poverty is lazy and just needs to work harder.

Obviously, this sets the stage for a balanced, thoughtful discussion.

 

On top of this, interpreting the data for this is incredibly difficult. We haven’t really talked about it directly here, and that’s probably a shortcoming on our part, but there is a difference between the information contained in what researchers call raw data and the factual conclusions those researchers are able to draw from the data.

Data is data, nothing more. It doesn’t really tell us why things occur most of the time. Good scientists and scholars know this, which is why you will frequently see hypotheses and conclusions change as we get more data about a scenario. This doesn’t mean that the scientists were careless or  intentionally misleading in their original analysis; just that they didn’t have some crucial data to draw the right conclusion.

 

For example: we know that poverty hits minority communities harder. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018) The data shows this pretty clearly. But why does it hit these communities harder? What is it about being a person of color that shunts you into a lower income bracket more often than white peers? Racists will say it’s because of a culture difference. Scholars will say it’s systemic. (and yes, I recognize that there is a bias in the previous two sentences) Unfortunately, the data itself doesn’t say anything. We have no way to directly measure if it’s because of the person or because of the circumstances, or if it’s some intersection of the two. Data is data, but the conclusions drawn from the data aren’t always reliable or factual.

And this same situation holds true for discussions about how raising the federal minimum wage will affect businesses and the American economy overall. The potential effects of raising the minimum wage are confounded by so many other factors that it's nearly impossible to definitively say “yes this is going to happen if we raise the minimum wage.” That said “nearly impossible” is not the same as “actually impossible.” And some people are gluttons for punishment and love studying this. Luckily, we aren’t the ones who had to run the studies; all we have to do is present all the hard work done by other people. One of the reasons I love this show. And, there are actually some pretty thorough arguments on both sides. So why don’t we talk about those now?

Should we raise it?

Yes! 

It’s Popular

In what may be a little surprising to some and not at all surprising to most, most Americans say they favor raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 59% of Americans supported the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That’s probably the most bi-partisan support we can expect any mildly controversial bill to have in years. (Reuters Staff, 2021)

 

And it’s no surprise that it has such a broad base of support. A 2019 Congressional Budget Office report projected a significant improvement in the standard of living for a least 17 million people, and roughly 1.3 million people would be elevated above the poverty line. (Maverick, 2020) The 2021 CBO report adjusted this number to .9 million. We can round and say roughly 1 million Americans would no longer be in poverty just by raising the minimum wage alone. (Congressional Budget Office, 2021)

Poverty Reduction

Moving out of poverty comes with a compounding benefit of reducing the need for federal and state government expenditures on social safety network services like financial aid. When someone is living at or below poverty, or within the appropriate margin of the poverty rate (remember that 200% marker we talked about earlier? That margin comes into play here.), they frequently utilize services like The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) or federally subsidized housing. Lifting people out of poverty, or above appropriate margin, means more people supporting themselves and lower payouts from the government. (Maverick, 2020)

Economic Benefits

Perhaps one of the best arguments for raising the minimum wage is the stimulating effect it would have on the economy. Almost immediately, companies would see an increase in business because people who had previously been unable to afford their services would have more disposable income. This isn’t to say that suddenly everyone is going to go out and buy the latest and greatest gaming system. But people are more able to buy things that they need, but don’t have the ability to pay for. The higher minimum wage would generally have the most benefit for lower-income families, these families, in turn, tend to spend a relatively larger fraction of their income. As a result, the total demand for goods and services would increase for several years, boosting overall real output. There is a caveat, however, because CBO projects that the economic effects from increases in demand would disappear after several years. This isn’t to say that there would be a reversal in the GDP. Nominal GDP would remain the same, though there may be a slight reduction in real GDP. (Congressional Budget Office, 2021) Whether or not the GDP would return to pre-wage hike levels is uncertain, however. The effect of the wage increase may simply fade into the background while other factors continue to push the GDP. 

Increased Equity

On the level of equity for all workers, a $15 minimum wage would begin to reverse decades of an increasing pay gap between the most underpaid workers and workers receiving close to the minimum wage. This effect is especially pronounced when factoring in gender and racial identities. (Derenoncourt & Montialoux, 2021) This was the case in the late 60s, when a minimum wage increase explained 20% of the decrease in earnings disparity between Black and White workers. Conversely, in 1979, nearly half the increase in inequality between women at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution was due to failures to adequately increase the minimum wage. (Autor et al., 2016)

Working Adults

And contrary to popular claims that the minimum wage is largely the province of teenage workers trying to earn experience in the workforce, more than half of the workers would benefit are adults between the ages of 25 and 54. Only 1 in 10 is a teenager. More than half of the people who would benefit work full time. More than 40% have some college experience, and fully 28% have children. (Economic Policy Institute, 2021)  Minimum wage earners are largely independent adults, or families raising children, not kids working a summer job and living in their mother’s basement.

 

In fact, essential and front-line workers make up a majority of those who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage: including substitute teachers, nursing assistants, home health aids, employees of residential or nursing care facilities, grocers, janitors, housekeepers, servers, and cooks. Ten million health care, education, construction, and manufacturing workers would see a raise. That’s 31% of the people who would benefit from this. People who kept going to work day after day in the midst of a global pandemic. People that we full well know our country cannot operate without. (Economic Policy Institute, 2021)

 

People who deserve more than a round of applause and nice signs.

Economic Productivity

The economy has grown dramatically in the course of the past several decades. Since the late 1960s, productivity has nearly doubled. That is to say, for each hour of work that an employee works, they are producing nearly twice as much product as they were just over 50 years ago. If minimum wage had kept pace with the growth in productivity, it would be over $20 an hour today. (Cooper, 2019)

 

There are many, many other arguments, but we only have an hour here and still need to talk about the arguments against raising the minimum wage. So let’s get to it.

No!

Okay, so those are some really compelling arguments for increasing the base level wage across the board. But, there are also some really compelling arguments for NOT making that jump.

Job Losses and the Cost of Doing Business

Raising the minimum wage to $15/hour by 2025 will cost the US Labor Market 1.4 million jobs, according to a 2019 report by the Congressional Business Office, and could decrease consumer spending and even overall household income. The logic used in this argument is the same standard logic that has been used to argue against minimum wage increases for time eternal - paying workers more will increase the cost of doing business, which will mean that business owners have to raise their prices and pass that cost along to the customer, which means that the customer will purchase fewer things or services, which means that businesses will have a lower income and the economy will slow. And this is an argument that many business owners stand behind.

 

Running a small business in the United States is difficult as it is, but it has been excruciatingly so over the last 12 months. About 53% of companies with less than 50 employees (surveyed by CBIZ) reported that the pandemic has had a moderate to severe impact on their business.

 

We do have to note that this argument isn’t without counterpoints - many economic researchers believe that increasing the minimum wage would NOT impact that many jobs. Instead, they believe that the economy overall, and businesses specifically, would see a boost from the number of workers who now have increased purchasing power. 

 

But one of the most concerning outcomes of research on the subject is that increasing the federal minimum wage during the fallout of the pandemic might specifically and disproportionately cost low-wage workers their jobs. In 2014, economics researchers Jeffrey Clemens and  Michael Wither used 3 years of data from the Great Recession to study how raising the minimum wage during that time period affected low-wage workers. And, his research found that in states that “defaulted” to the federal minimum wage there was a significant negative effect on the income of low wage workers, from loss of employment,  increased probabilities of working without pay (i.e., an "internship" effect), and lost wage growth potential due to reductions in experience accumulation (Clemens & Wither).

 

So, while the idea of losing a million jobs is scary, the idea of causing disproportionate job loss for the very people the wage hike should benefit is scarier. And it gives reason to pause before signing on to the increase. 

The income gap

Some folks are cautioning against raising the federal minimum wage because of some potential negative effects on those who would earn that higher wage but STILL not be able to make a living where they live. The working poor we talked about earlier.  Many of those families are headed by minimum wage earners and rely on programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), free school breakfasts and lunches, WIC, and Medicaid to ensure that everyone in the family - especially children - have access to enough food and appropriate health and dental care. 

 

Eligibility for programs like these, in most states, is based on the Federal Poverty Level that we discussed toward the beginning of the episode. The general range for eligibility for these programs is from 130-200% of the FPL. That’s between $34,450 - 53,000 in 2021.  At $7.25/hr, two full-time workers would earn around $30K a year to support their family. If we slightly more than double that, up to $15 per hour, that puts the same family at $62,400 per year and out of the range where they would have access to these benefit programs. But even that income level may not be enough to meet their basic needs if they live in a state or an area with a high basic cost of living.  For example, basic cost of living for a family of 4 in Hennepin County, MN (Minneapolis) is about $101,000. 

 

Now, this argument in particular isn’t really a knock to increasing the minimum wage - it’s more an indicator that we probably need to reconsider what it takes to qualify for programs that help ensure basic nutrition and access to healthcare.  Maybe that looks like tying eligibility to cost of living, or something, but that’s a topic for another show. 

Stress on Systems

Another significant consideration of raising the federal minimum wage is the stress that it will put on already taxed systems like school districts and infrastructure systems. These industries aren’t like regular businesses - they don’t earn money from consumer purchases directly. They’re funded by the state and federal governments, which are funded by some combination of taxes and grants, and their budgets are largely out of their control. So, increasing the base pay for workers in these systems - sometimes by more than double - will add more layers of difficulty to their operations.

 

Let’s look at K-12 public schools specifically.  Today, about 3 million low wage earners make up the structure of K-12 school operations. They are cooks, and janitors, and secretaries, and paraprofessionals, and classroom helpers, and before and after school program staff.  School districts have filled their ranks with these workers in an effort to offset the effects of shrinking budgets and low tax income.  According to an article in Education Week, no state so far has explicitly set aside extra money to compensate school districts for new, costly minimum wage requirements. So what, then, are administrators supposed to do when their payroll cost spikes?  

 

Some administrators who have been through the process say that they’ve had to upend their entire employees pay structure, others say that they have to renegotiate major contracts with substitute teachers and transportation and food service vendors. Other options include appealing to voters to raise taxes to afford the new wages; laying off employees or freezing hiring; or giving low-wage workers the required increases and forgoing other priorities like raising teacher salaries and repairing crumbling facilities (Burnette)..

 

The issue is not a willingness to see hourly workers make a living wage, but simply the ability to cover the cost when public school budgets are already slim and states are facing steep drops in sales tax revenue and steep increases in expenditure from social services due to the pandemic  If, as some researchers are suggesting, education spending after the COVID pandemic follows a similar pattern to that of the Great Recession, we can expect an average decrease of 7% across the country. (Education Next) Where exactly are administrators supposed to find money to double their payroll costs? 

Wrap Up

RIFF IT, BABY

What surprised you?

Can any conclusion be drawn?

Plug

Women’s History Month - Deb Haaland

The Senate on Monday confirmed New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior making her the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department and the first to lead the Interior. Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo and a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico, which means that for the first time ever a Native American will lead the federal agency that has wielded influence over the nation’s tribes for nearly two centuries. The Interior also oversees a host of other issues, including energy development on public lands and waters, national parks and endangered species, and Haaland has indicated that her heritage and connection to the land will influence her decision making and how she chooses to lead the agency. 

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