We hear a lot about minimum wage, but when we saw this chart based on a recent report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it really drove home how low wages affect women and their families. It’s staggering!
Look at the size of the blue section in the first chart – this represents adult women who are working for minimum wage, almost half of the total.
Today, Federal minimum wage stands at $7.25 per hour. A full-time minimum wage employee earns $14,500 a year, roughly $4,000 below the poverty line for a single mother with two children. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since 1968, it would now be almost $10.60 an hour. If it had kept pace with increases in employee productivity, it would now be $22.00 an hour.
Congress has raised the wage only three times in the past 30 years.
