zlacker

>>tysone+(OP)
A few threads seem to believe that the minimum wage is high enough / need not be increased. I don’t actually want to argue about mechanism, but think that it’s imoortant to note that the math says our (current) minimum wage is demonstrably insufficient to remove poverty.

With the Federal minimum wage currently at $7.25/hr, that’s just $15k/year at full-time. That puts many minimum wage workers below many countries’ average wages [1]. But that’s before adjusting for purchasing power parity.

Being a single earner on minimum wage effectively guarantees you and your family will be in poverty in the US. That is effectively not true in most countries in Europe, even the poor ones. You don’t get to live well or anything, but you certainly aren’t planning on poverty.

[1] California, and San Francisco in particular, have a higher minimum wage but also higher expenses. Worse, many low-education workers are waitresses, which often have a “tipped minimum wage” as low as $2.15/hr before tips (again, San Francisco doesn’t do this, but it’s expensive to live here).

>>boulos+Aj1
There are nearly twice as many Americans working below the minimum wage than at the minimum wage [0]. The BLS data is from self reported numbers. It doesn't include information about Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or by individual state or local minimum wage laws. But if even a portion of those individuals working below the federal minimum wage in the gray market or under the table, it kind of makes minimum wage rates less important. If there is that much flexibility of employees to shift from (presumably) legal minimum wage jobs to under the table jobs paying below minimum wage, then increasing the minimum wage could serve to move some of those minimum wage workers to the informal sector. In the informal sector, they don't benefit from legal protections and would harm them in the long run (IMO).

[0] https://stats.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.ht...

>>bko+Nx1
Hmm. I don’t think that data necessarily leads to that conclusion. Two things:

- Many states have a higher minimum wage, so the BLS reports are annoying. They do strictly less-than-or-equal rather than also including “nearby” or even “minimum in state”, making the overall percentage fairly low. I’m guessing data for “What percentage of the labor force makes less than $15/hr” would be more helpful, but is too far from the current minimum wage to be a reasonable discussion.

- Anecdotally, informal labor is driven by workers without the right to work (whether due to immigration status or otherwise). So I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that people would suddenly end up below minimum wage; the more likely outcome is as others have suggested: companies will raise prices (keeping the job), invest in automation (removing the job), or both.

>>boulos+1D1
It’s too late, but I found that the BLS has a decent histogram of pay: https://www.bls.gov/oes/2017/may/distribution.htm including broken out by industry.