Minimum wage is not enough to suffice the basic needs for a living
Gili Malinsky 23, Gili Malinsky is a lead work reporter at Make It. Previously an earnings reporter at CNBC and Acorns’ partnership site, Grow, her work has also appeared in The New York Times, NBC News, and Vice, among others. Gili received her degree in journalism from Boston University, “Minimum wages are going up, but typical workers still don’t make enough to get by in any U.S. state,” CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/16/minimum-wage-many-workers-still-arent-making-enough-to-get-by.html//ethanh
Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., in January. Four more states are poised to do so later this year. , new wages range from $9.95 per hour in Montana to $16.10 per hour in D.C.
While the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour since 2009, many states have continually raised theirs. “States began instituting their own, higher minimum wages during periods of federal inaction,” says , an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “So the longer the gap between federal minimum wage increases, the more likely some states went ahead and raised their own state-level minimum.”
Still, the vast majority of single people working fulltime and making a local minimum wage aren’t earning enough to get by.
CNBC Make It compared with the average living wage for one adult with no dependents according to MIT’s , and found that no state offers a minimum wage that is in line with the living wage.
We then compared those to income brackets for nonfamily households from the Census Bureau to see how many individuals are making near or below the living wage in each state.
In Kansas, for example, where the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and the , about 48% of nonfamily households fall within or below the income bracket that includes that living wage. They account for approximately 17% of the state’s population.
These comparisons aren’t perfect, but they give a sense of how many single people could be struggling to make ends meet.
With so much information readily available about what it would take to survive in each state, why haven’t wages kept up with the cost of living? Here are a few of the reasons.
Those setting minimum wages are ‘probably using house rents from 2012’