New Jersey : $12/h
New York :$12.5/h
Florida : $8.65/h
Massachusetts : $13.50
Jeudi 31 décembre 2020 ((rezonodwes.com))–Come Friday, many low-wage workers across the US are getting a pay bump.
Twenty states are raising their minimum wage rates — some by pennies, others by a dollar or more — as part of previously-scheduled efforts to adjust for cost-of-living gains or to ratchet up toward goals like $15-an-hour minimum pay.
In New Mexico, the minimum wage will increase to $10.50, up $1.50 from the current $9 wage. And in California, the rate for employers with 26 workers or more will rise from $13 to $14 an hour, the highest state-wide baseline in the country. In Minnesota, the gain is just 8 cents, to a $10.08 hourly rate for large employers.
The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour hasn’t budged since 2009, and as of 2021, 20 US states will continue to have a minimum wage either equal to or below the federal level, making $7.25 their default baseline. The value of the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 when it was $1.60, which would be worth about $12 in 2020 dollars.
Although some of the new state increases were set in place years before, they carry additional significance now, when low-wage workers have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
« We have lots of low-wage, service workers who are working through the Covid crisis, many of whom are in jobs with a greater risk of transmission, » said Ken Jacobs, chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California-Berkeley. « This will be a very welcome boost for them. As well, a lot of families are struggling right now in this crisis. »
Workers’ needs are greater during an economic downturn because, with so many people jobless, they have little bargaining power and employers are able to keep wages low, said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Minimum wage workers are typically younger and predominantly have jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector, federal data show. These service-heavy businesses have been rocked throughout the pandemic as public health and safety measures have triggered closures of restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues.
As the pandemic has raged on, housing and food insecurity have risen and incomes have fallen. And it’s been lower-wage workers who have suffered the brunt of the economic fallout.
source : CNN Business
