Fair Pay for Women and People of Color in Illinois Requires Increasing the Minimum Wage

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Illinois – mostly women and people of color – struggle to make ends meet on minimum wage earnings. A bill pending in the Illinois Senate (S.B. 68) would raise the minimum wage from $8.25 to $10.00 per hour by 2016, then index it annually to keep pace with inflation.[1]  Increasing the minimum wage is a key step toward fair pay for women and people of color in Illinois.

Women and people of color are more likely to be paid the minimum wage.   

• Women were about six in ten Illinois workers who were paid minimum wage or less in 2012.[2]  They provided care for children and elders, cleaned homes and offices, and waited tables. 
• Women of color are disproportionately represented among female minimum wage workers.  Nationally, black women were just under 13 percent and Hispanic women were just under 14 percent of all employed women in 2012;[3] among women who made the federal minimum wage, more than 15 percent were black and more than 18 percent were Hispanic.[4]
• Overall, people of color are disproportionately represented among minimum wage workers.  Nationally, black and Hispanic workers were about 11 percent and 15 percent of all workers in 2012, respectively;[5] among workers who made the federal minimum wage, 15 percent were black and over 20 percent were Hispanic.[6]

It’s time to give low-wage workers in Illinois a raise. 

• A woman working full time, year round in Illinois at the current minimum wage of $8.25 will earn just $16,500 annually.[7]  That’s nearly $2,000 below the federal poverty line for a mother with two children.[8] If the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour) had kept pace with inflation, it would be over $10.60 per hour today, setting a floor for states more than $2.35 above Illinois’s current minimum wage.[9]     

• Illinois families are struggling in this tough economy. In 2011, 37 percent of black families with children were in poverty,[10] 26 percent of Hispanic families with children were in poverty,[11] and 41 percent of single-mother families were in poverty.[12]

Raising the minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage would boost wages for working women and people of color in Illinois and help close the wage gap.

• Increasing the minimum wage to $10.00 per hour would boost annual earnings to $20,000, an increase of $3,500 per year – enough to lift a family of three out of poverty.[13]  Indexing the wage to inflation would prevent its value from falling further relative to the cost of living.
• The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that, if a proposal similar to S.B. 68 had been enacted when it was introduced in 2011, it would have increased wages for more than one million workers over four years – 56 percent of whom would be women and 41 percent of whom would be people of color.[14]
• Increasing the minimum wage would mean higher pay for thousands of Illinois women and help close the wage gap.[15]  In 2011, Illinois women working full time, year round were paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.[16] Black women working full time, year round made only 65 cents, and Hispanic women only 48 cents, for every dollar paid to their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts.[17]

Raising the minimum wage would strengthen Illinois’s economy.

• Increasing the wages paid to low-wage workers results in lower turnover, boosts worker efforts, and encourages employers to invest in their workers.[18]
• Raising the minimum wage does not cause job loss, even during periods of recession.[19] 
• Most minimum wage workers need this income to make ends meet and spend it quickly, boosting the economy.  Research indicates that for every $1 added to the minimum wage, low-wage worker households spent an additional $2,800 the following year. [20]

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Fair Pay for Women and People of Color in Illinois Requires Increasing the Minimum Wage and the Tipped Minimum Wage