By 2021 in Seattle, the minimum wage will be $15 an hour. Employees will be paid at least $15 an hour to bag groceries, to flip burgers and to make coffee. These are jobs that almost any responsible adult (and most teenagers) can fill.
With such a large population of people available to take these positions, there is really no need to raise minimum wage by more than $5 an hour, or to more than 1.5 times its current $9.32. According to www.dol.gov, the current federal minimum wage is $7.25, but 23 states and Washington, D.C. all have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage. According to www.ncsl.org, “minimum wages will go up in nine states on Jan. 1, 2015 because of indexed increases in their state law.”
Multiple states have the minimum wage on the ballot for this election cycle, with many proponents of increasing it. In Arkansas, voters will have the opportunity to vote on Nov. 4 for a $2.25 minimum wage increase over the next four years, which would bring it to $8.50 in 2017.
Although this potential increase is small in comparison to Seattle, it still has an impact. There is no need to continue to increase the pay for expendable employees.
Many times the argument to raise minimum wage is so that workers can support their families, make a living and have higher quality of life. Although those ideas are good in theory, it is often not how a minimum wage raise plays out.
According to the Heritage Foundation, more than “half of minimum-wage earners are between the ages of 16 and 24.” This means that they are not working to support themselves but to earn income on the side while going to school or holding a job while looking for work in their desired career field. There is no need for them to be paid more for work that someone else could be doing.
In addition, when the minimum wage is raised, that money has to come from somewhere. This means that employers have to dish out more money, which means they must charge more for their goods and services. According to CATO, “A 2004 review of more than 20 minimum wage studies looking at price effects found that a 10 percent increase in the U.S. minimum wage raises food prices by up to four percent.”
In theory, the minimum wage employees should be able to afford more, but the prices just go up. If food prices go up four percent, other products and services are sure to increase in price as well. If prices are not increased, the other possible outcome of raising the minimum wage is job loss.
According to CATO, “a review of more than 100 minimum wage studies by David Neumark and William Wascher found that about two-thirds found negative employment effects.” When employers are forced to pay their employees more from the same budget they had before, they cannot hire as many employees or have them work as many hours.
The average family income of a minimum-wage worker is $53,000 a year, less than the national average of $79,500 a year but well above the poverty level, according to the Heritage Foundation.
So no, working a minimum wage job won’t earn you the most glamorous lifestyle. But you’re also not working the most glamorous job. I’ve worked for minimum wage, and of course I would have loved to make more money but it isn’t logical or good for the economy.
Minimum wage jobs pay minimum wage for a reason: because the employees are easy to replace. I was a lifeguard, but the pool manager could have found 10 other lifeguards in 20 minutes if she tried.
There’s no need to continue to increase pay for jobs that continue to require the same amount of skill.
