Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel

Julie Vogtman is Senior Counsel for the Family Economic Security Program at the National Women’s Law Center. She works on a range of issues involving economic support for low-income women and their families, including minimum wage policies, unemployment benefits, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). She also contributes to the Center’s work on federal budget and tax policies, including implementation of the tax credit components of the Affordable Care Act.  Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Vogtman was an associate with Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Furman University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Expert in: Family Support Programs, Federal Budget, Federal Tax Policy, Minimum Wage, Unemployment, Poverty & Income Support
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My Take

It’s 2.13 – Time to Raise the Minimum Wage

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: February 13, 2013 at 06:24 pm

ROC United's Rally on Capitol HillToday is kind of a big deal for advocates pushing for a higher minimum wage (myself included). As you may have heard, in his State of the Union address last night, President Obama called for raising the minimum wage and indexing it to keep pace with inflation – and did so eloquently, I might add:

"We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong. …

Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. …For businesses across the country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets. In fact, working folks shouldn’t have to wait year after year for the minimum wage to go up while CEO pay has never been higher. So here’s an idea that Governor Romney and I actually agreed on last year: let’s tie the minimum wage to the cost of living, so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on."

And there’s another reason today is important in the minimum wage fight: February 13 is 2.13 – and $2.13 is the minimum hourly cash wage that millions of tipped workers have been paid since 1991. (Though President Obama didn’t mention the tipped minimum wage in his remarks, the White House affirms that it should be increased along with the regular minimum wage.) Today, tipped workers from across the country convened in Washington, DC to call for the fair wages they have been denied for far too long.

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Tags: Minimum Wage, State of the Union, Tipped Minimum Wage, Minimum Wage, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

States Taking the Lead on Higher Minimum Wages

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: February 11, 2013 at 01:43 pm

It’s been a busy few weeks on the minimum wage front, as policymakers in a slew of states have moved to raise wages for low-paid workers. If you follow our blog, you already know that minimum wage increases are on the agenda in Maryland and New York – and you know that this is especially good news for women, who make up the majority of minimum wage workers in those states and across the country.

While a federal minimum wage increase – like the one proposed in the Fair Minimum Wage Act last year – is needed to boost pay for minimum wage and tipped workers throughout the U.S., it’s great to see momentum building at the state level. Here’s a quick run-down of recent developments:

  • California. A bill pending in the Assembly, AB-10, would increase the minimum wage from $8.00 per hour to $8.25 in 2014, $8.75 in 2015, and $9.25 in 2016, then adjust the wage annually for inflation beginning in 2017.
  • Connecticut. A bill pending in the Senate, S.B. 387, would raise the minimum wage from $8.25 per hour to $9.00 in July 2013 and $9.75 in July 2014, with annual indexing beginning in July 2015. NWLC’s new fact sheet shows that over 246,000 Connecticut workers would get a raise by 2014 under this proposal – and about six in ten of those workers would be women.
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Tags: California, Connecticut, Fair Minimum Wage Act, Hawaii, Illinois, Minimum Wage, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Minimum Wage, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

Nearly 846,000 Women in New York Would Get a Raise Under Gov. Cuomo's Minimum Wage Proposal

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: February 01, 2013 at 11:33 am

News on the minimum wage just keeps coming this week, and today’s update is from New York. Earlier this month, Governor Cuomo released his budget for 2013-14, which proposes raising the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.75 per hour and raising the minimum cash wage for tipped food service workers from $5.00 to $6.03 per hour, effective July 1, 2013. And now a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) and the National Employment Law Project (NELP) shows that the majority of New York workers who would get a raise under Governor Cuomo’s proposal are women — 845,700 women to be exact.

Today, minimum wage workers in New York earn just $14,500 per year — more than $3,600 below the poverty line for a mom with two kids, and far less than a family needs to be economically secure in a state with a notoriously high cost of living. If Governor Cuomo’s proposal becomes law, women earning the minimum wage would see their annual pay rise by $3,000. Tipped food service workers like restaurant servers — who are about 70 percent women nationwide — could get an extra $2,060 per year.

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Tags: Minimum Wage, New York, Poverty & Income Support, Minimum Wage, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

Good News for Maryland Women: Minimum Wage Increase to Be Introduced

Posted by
Alison Channon, Program Assistant
Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel
| Posted on: January 30, 2013 at 11:53 am

Remember when a hot dog and a soda cost 39 cents? Yeah, neither do we.

We all know that restaurant prices rise nearly every year with inflation. The cost of everything from groceries to gas to rent rises, too. But many workers have not seen their wages rise in years, leaving them straining to make ends meet on paychecks that keep getting smaller relative to the cost of living.

For our neighbors in Maryland, the minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum, and the minimum cash wage for tipped workers is woefully low at $3.63 per hour (though higher than the federal floor of $2.13 per hour). If the minimum wage had risen with inflation over the past several decades, it would be close to $10.60 per hour today. But neither the minimum wage nor the tipped minimum wage is linked to inflation in Maryland, so the purchasing power of these extremely low wages erodes further each year.

Today, full-time minimum wage earnings in Maryland amount to just $14,500 annually – more than $3,600 below the federal poverty line for a mom with two children. Women represent over 60 percent of the workers struggling to get by on the minimum wage in Maryland, and people of color are disproportionately represented among the minimum wage workforce as well.

But there is good news on the horizon. Maryland lawmakers are about to introduce a bill to gradually raise the Maryland minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.00 per hour, set the tipped minimum wage at 70 percent of the minimum wage, and index both wages to keep pace with inflation.

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Tags: Maryland, Minimum Wage, Tipped Minimum Wage, Minimum Wage, Employment, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

Gov. Christie (Mostly) Rejects Minimum Wage Increase NJ Women Need

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: January 29, 2013 at 01:45 pm

Yesterday was the deadline for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to act on a minimum wage bill that the state legislature passed in December. Governor Christie did not sign the bill, which would have raised the state's minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 per hour and adjusted it annually to keep pace with the rising cost of living. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that the legislature's bill would lift wages for over half a million New Jersey workers, 55 percent of them women. But these hardworking women and their families will have to wait longer for the raise they need, since Governor Christie issued a "conditional veto" — that is, he sent the bill back to the legislature with proposed changes.

Most of those changes would seriously weaken the bill that a majority of elected representatives in New Jersey already passed. Governor Christie's proposal would raise New Jersey's minimum wage to $8.25 per hour over three years, rather than to $8.50 in 2013. And once the wage reached $8.25, it would be stuck there until the legislature acted again to raise it, because Governor Christie's proposal would eliminate the annual cost-of-living adjustments in future years.

New Jersey's cost of living is among the highest in the country. Indexing the minimum wage for inflation is essential to help ensure that the buying power of the minimum wage does not erode as it has over the past decades; indeed, if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since the 1960s, it would be more than $10.50 per hour today. Perhaps that's why a recent poll showed 76 percent of New Jerseyans support both raising the state's minimum wage and tying the wage to inflation.

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