Minimum Wage

California just enacted the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, joining New York and Hawaii as states that care for those who care for the vulnerable. Domestic workers are an important part of today’s work force. These workers – 95 percent of whom are women – care for the household, the children and grandparents, the sick and people with disabilities. In the words of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, they do “the work that makes all other work possible.” And yet, they are often paid very low wages, and work in difficult conditions.

After 7 years of advocacy and two vetoes, California’s domestic workers will finally receive a very important workplace protection: the right to overtime pay. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can be for workers who spend all day taking care of children, the elderly and the infirm. The bill of rights is estimated to cover 200,000 California housekeepers, child-care providers, and caregivers. Read more »

I have a confession to make: I love McDonald’s French fries. When I was in college, during particularly stressful finals or mid-terms weeks, I would go to the campus McDonald’s and order myself a small fries. I’d time my visit around when I knew the fries were likely to be fresh and excitedly hop on my toes waiting for that crispy, salty goodness.

Nowadays, when I think back to my trips to those glowing golden arches, I can’t help but think about minimum wage and low-wage workers; and no matter how delicious those French fries tasted, I can’t help but leave with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth and feel as though those arches have lost their luster.

NWLC’s analyses show that two-thirds of minimum-wage and tipped-wage workers are women, 60% of women’s job gains in the recovery are in the ten largest low-wage jobs. NWLC analysis of the Census Bureau’s most recent numbers show that the overall poverty rate hasn’t budged much, with 18.4 percent of families with children in poverty, and 14.5 percent of women compared with 11.0 percent of men living in poverty.  More than one in seven women – 17.8 million – live in poverty.  Read more »

Big news from a big state today: the California legislature passed a minimum wage increase! Governor Jerry Brown has confirmed that he will sign the bill, noting in a statement that the legislation “is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy.”

Currently, California’s minimum wage is $8.00 per hour – higher than the federal level of $7.25 per hour, but still far too low in a state with a notoriously high cost of living. Under the new law, California’s minimum wage will rise to $9.00 in July 2014 and to $10.00 in January 2016 – higher than any state’s minimum wage today. (Because the minimum wages in nearby Washington and Oregon are indexed to rise with inflation, those wages may be around $10 by 2016 as well.)

This is a major step forward for hundreds of thousands of workers in California – especially for women, who represent about 60 percent of the state’s minimum wage workforce. A minimum wage of $10.00 per hour will bring annual full-time pay up from $16,000 to $20,000, enough for a mom with two kids to pull her family out of poverty. According to the Governor’s Office, 25 percent of California children – that’s about 2.4 million – live in families where at least one parent earns the minimum wage. Read more »

We all know it can be hard to come back to work after a long weekend. For those of you fighting for women’s equality, here are 10 reasons to roll up your sleeves on the Tuesday after Labor Day: Read more »

Labor Day weekend is almost here, and I hope you have fun plans in store. I, for one, intend to observe the holiday with a few last lazy hours by the pool and a backyard barbecue. Of course, no barbecue is complete without some refreshing beverages – and this Labor Day, I’ll be raising my glass to toast this year’s major progress toward a higher minimum wage.

Perhaps you’re wondering what about the minimum wage could be worth celebrating; after all, the federal minimum wage has been stuck for more than four years at just $7.25 an hour, a level that leaves a full-time working mom with two kids thousands of dollars below the poverty line. $7.25 is more than $3.00 below where the minimum wage would be if it had kept up with inflation over the past four decades, and only about half the wage civil rights leaders called for 50 years ago during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Today’s low minimum wage especially harms women and their families, since women are nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers – and about two-thirds of tipped workers like restaurant servers, for whom the federal minimum cash wage has been frozen at just $2.13 an hour for 22 years.

But I believe we’re getting closer every day to better pay for low-wage workers, thanks to the tremendous momentum that is building from the ground up. Here’s how change is happening:

From coast to coast, people are calling (loudly!) for higher wages.

Just yesterday, thousands of fast food workers amplified their campaign for higher wages in a national day of action, with strikes in about 60 cities across the country. July 24th – the four-year anniversary of the last federal minimum wage increase – saw similar nationwide protests. Read more »

I’m recently back from my summer vacation, and one of my favorite ways to catch up on the news is to watch the Daily Show episodes that have lined up on my Tivo.

A new analysis released by NWLC today reveals a startling new fact: 60 percent of women’s job gains in the recovery are in low-wage jobs. That’s right: 60 percent. Twenty percent of men’s job gains in the recovery are in low-wage jobs.

Here are the top six things you need to know about the kinds of jobs women and men are gaining in the recovery:

1. These jobs are in a variety of industries – but they are mostly service jobs.

We examined the 10 largest low-wage jobs (defined in this analysis as jobs that typically pay less than $10.10 per hour).  That list includes childcare workers; maids and housekeepers; home health aides; personal care aides; cashiers; waiters and waitresses; combined food preparers and servers; bartenders; food preparation workers; and hand packers and packagers.

2. The massive gain in low-wage jobs represents a sharp downward trend for women workers.

Sixty percent of the total net increase in employment for women between 2009, the first year of the recovery, and 2012 came in these 10 jobs.  This represents disproportionate growth in low-wage jobs, since these jobs employed less than 15 percent of all working women in 2009.

Four years ago today, minimum wage workers across the country got a raise. The federal minimum wage rose to $7.25 per hour, the last step of a three-step increase that started in 2007, when the minimum wage was just $5.15 per hour, and completed in 2009. That wasn’t a lot of money in 2009 and it’s even less today—$7.25 won’t quite cover two gallons of gas. (According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, regular unleaded was $3.633 per gallon in June of 2013, and last year hit $3.927). A woman working full time, year round at $7.25 per hour only makes $14,500 per year, barely above the poverty line for a single woman and thousands of dollars below the poverty line for a single mom with two children.  

Communities around the country have recognized that $7.25 per hour is not enough. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have state minimum wages above the federal level , and next year, New York will join their ranks. These states are also helping to narrow the wage gap: on average, states with minimum wages above the federal level have wage gaps that are 14% smaller [PDF] than those at the federal minimum wage. Read more »

As the single mother of two young children, Losia Nyankale’s job is what keeps her family afloat. But between earning low wages and having no paid sick days, Losia is just one child care emergency away from losing her job. This pressure made it difficult for Losia to care for her mother when she suffered a stroke, and it forced Losia to return to work immediately after the birth of her second child—despite her doctor’s orders. Losia works long hours to be able to afford her basic living expenses and child care. And she often finds herself in an all-too familiar bind: if she picks up more shifts to earn a better living, the child care costs that she can barely afford now will rise, and she’ll have even less time with her family. Losia would like to go back to school to improve her situation, but the combination of low wages, lack of paid sick days, and lack of affordable child care, keep that dream from coming true for now.

For many years Teresa worked on call as a banquet server and had an extremely difficult time arranging child care at the last minute for her children because of her unpredictable schedule. She found herself turning down jobs or quitting jobs where she wasn’t able to arrange child care, even though she needed the income badly. Like Losia, Teresa was a single mom who often didn’t earn enough money to pay for care. Read more »

It's a fitting question to ask this week, which marks the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the landmark law that established the first federal minimum wage. And it's a particularly important question for women, who make up nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers nationwide.

The answer, though, depends a lot on where you live. A majority of states follow the federal minimum wage, which is not scheduled to rise even though it has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for almost four years — and for tipped workers in states that follow the federal standard, the minimum cash wage has been frozen at a shockingly low $2.13 per hour for more than 20 years. But in states like Washington, Colorado, Ohio, and Vermont, the minimum wage will automatically rise in January 2014 to keep up with inflation, and minimum wage increases recently enacted in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island will also begin to take effect in 2014. 

To make it easy for you to find out what’s happening with the minimum wage in your state, the National Women's Law Center just released this handy interactive map. 

You can click on any state to see its minimum wage and tipped minimum wage, along with the share of minimum wage workers who are women, the next scheduled increase in the minimum wage, and any recent action on the minimum wage in the state legislature.  Read more »