Should Minimum Wage Be Increased? Nicholas, Caleb, Danny, Hunter, Derek and Bruce
- Minimum wage, or the Fair Labor Standards Act was instituted in 1938, in attempt to get more fair rights for workers.
- This act got rid of oppressive child labor, set the minimum hourly wage to $0.25, and set the maximum hours that could be worked in a week at 44 hours.
- However, the increase in pay for minimum wage hourly workers would cause more harm than good, and should not be altered.
- If this was to be increased, employees that work at jobs with minimum skill requirements could be making roughly the same amount as people who have jobs that require skill and this would cause even more dispute over how much all employees should be paid.
- The majority of minimum wage workers are teenagers. 701,000 employees age 16 and up in the U.S. were paid minimum wage; and about 1.5 million workers had wages below the national minimum. They represent 58.7 percent of all wage workers. All minimum wage workers make up about 2.7 percent of all hourly paid workers.
- Very few college graduates earn minimum wage. About 260,000 people who had a college degree made at least the minimum wage or below. There are reports of workers, such as Bobby Bingham from Missouri Kansas, who works four part-time low-wage jobs just to get by. Other employees protest for higher wages.
- Ex: Debbra Alexis, sales associate at Victoria’s Secret, gathered more than 800 signatures in support of higher wages.
- Even most blue collar workers don’t earn minimum wage. According to Forbes, the top ten blue collar jobs earn about $27 an hour, or $56,160 a year. The majority of blue collar workers earn about $41,600 a year. Most blue collar workers have very little post-secondary education, if any.
- What could happen if minimum wage is increased?
- San Francisco raised its minimum wage from $6.75 to $10.50 an hour throughout regular intervals. Has negative effects on the youngest and least-skilled workers. Lose hours number of entry-level positions go to more skilled workers.
- Cities having a different minimum wage than their state.
- About half of the states earn more than the federal amount, while the remaining states have same rate as the federal amount most of the states are earning between $7-7.49
- Minimum wage in Illinois is $8.25, but has $7.74 of buying power in Chicago and has $10.39 of buying power two hours outside of Chicago
- Raising the minimum wage would hurt businesses, and would require owners to give more money to workers. Money that they could be spending on supplies, operating expenses, and benefits.
- If raised, companies would have to maintain less workers and downsize the company in order to afford it and more skilled and educated workers will seek pay increases.
- Only 12.5% of people in america work full time for minimum wage jobs. A slight raise in pay would not make the 12.5% “financially stable” and would just go towards leisurely spending. 75% of people making minimum wage are not dependent and do not rely on their income for higher level living.
- In 2015, 78.2 million workers were paid at hourly rates, 870 thousand of those workers were paid minimum wage.
- The relevant argument for raising minimum wage is to raise it to ten or fifteen dollars an hour.
- If minimum wage was raised to ten dollars per hour, that would mean: 37.93% increase for minimum wage, 18.97% less workers and 140,341 workers laid off due to money shortages.
- If minimum wage was raised to fifteen dollars per hour, that would mean: 106.9% increase for minimum wage, 53.45% minimum wage workers would be laid off
- The minimum wage in the United States should not be raised because, although it may seem helpful to some, it would have more damaging effects than favorable ones.
- Youngest and least-skilled workers will lose hours, increase in poverty and an increase in the price of consumer goods, least-skilled workers will have a more difficult time finding a job, businesses would be harmed because owners would have to pay workers more money, which means less supplies and benefits companies will have to downsize due to the hiring of less workers.
- If it was raised, unemployment would begin to rise. The size of many companies would shrink. The extra money people that people would make will most likely go towards leisurely spending. Although a higher minimum wage looks good on paper, it is not. In fact, it will do more harm than good.
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