Question

1. What percentage of American workers get paid above minimum wage? In general, why do such workers get paid more than the government-mandated minimum wage?

2. Based on your previous responses, do you believe that the minimum wage should be raised, lowered, remain as it currently is, or be altogether eliminated? If you think there should be a minimum wage, how would you arrive at the specific wage?

Answer 1

1:

Minimum wages have been defined as “the minimum amount of remuneration that an employer is required to pay wage earners for the work performed during a given period, which cannot be reduced by collective agreement or an individual contract”.¹

This definition refers to the binding nature of minimum wages, regardless of the method of fixing them. Minimum wages can be set by statute, decision of a competent authority, a wage board, a wage council, or by industrial or labour courts or tribunals. Minimum wages can also be set by giving the force of law to provisions of collective agreements.

The purpose of minimum wages is to protect workers against unduly low pay. They help ensure a just and equitable share of the fruits of progress to all, and a minimum living wage to all who are employed and in need of such protection. Minimum wages can also be one element of a policy to overcome poverty and reduce inequality, including those between men and women, by promoting the right to equal remuneration for work of equal value.

Minimum wage systems should not be seen or used in isolation, but should be designed in a way to supplement and reinforce other social and employment policies. Several types of measures can be used to tackle income and labour market inequality, including pro-employment policies, social transfers, and creating an enabling environment for sustainable enterprises.    

The purpose of a minimum wage, which sets a floor, should also be distinguished from collective bargaining, which can be used to set wages above an existing floor. Figure 1 shows a hypothetical wage distribution with a "minimum wage zone" and a "collective bargaining zone" which can be used to establish minimum standards and to set wages above an existing floor.

Figure 2 illustrates that the effectiveness of minimum wages depends on many factors, including the extent to which they afford protection to all workers in an employment relationship, including women, and youth and migrant workers, regardless of their contractual arrangements, as well as all industries and occupations in the economy (coverage); whether they are set and adjusted at an adequate level that covers the needs of workers and their families, while taking into account economic factors (level); and whether employers comply with minimum wage regulations (compliance).


Figure 1. The distribution of wages (hypothetical wage distribution of a population of 56 wage-earners)

How to read this figure : Figure 1 shows a hypothetical wage distribution of a population of 56 wage-earners before the introduction of a minimum wage. The level of wages is on the horizontal axis, and the number of wage earners is on the vertical axis.

We see the full range of market wages, including a relatively small proportion of workers with extremely low pay on the left end of the wage distribution. For example, 1 employee has a wage of 1$, 2 employees are paid 3$, while 5 employees receive wages of 8$.

The yellow circle called the “minimum wage zone” shows that a minimum wage should in principle remain targeted at the lowest-paid employees, to eliminate “unduly low pay”; the blue circle is the “collective bargaining zone” and illustrates the principle that collective bargaining can be used to set wages above an existing floor.

Figure 2. Main dimensions of effective minimum wages²

2:

You can expect to hear more liberal agitating for a higher wage in 2014. And of course, you can also expect to hear conservatives shout back that the idea is a job killer. To prepare you for the inevitable policy battle, here's our FAQ.

Just tell me if the minimum wage kills jobs or not.

Patience, young grasshopper. We'll get to that question. But let's ease in with some basics first.

Fine. What is the minimum wage anyway?

Ah, good place to start. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which means that depending on the city you're in, 60 minutes of work will just about buy you a Chipoltle burrito (without guac). By historical standards, it's fairly low. Thanks to inflation, the minimum today wage is worth a few dollars less than when its real value peaked in 1968. (Graph from CNN)

That said, the federal minimum is only part of the national story. Today, 19 states and the District of Columbia have a higher wage floor. Meanwhile, New Jersey just became the 11th state to index theirs to the cost of living. (Graph courtesy of The American Prospect's Sam Waldman, who has his own useful crash course).

Note: California's minimum is actually set to rise later in July 2014.

And of course, some local governments take things even further, like SeaTac with its $15 minimum.

How many people earn the minimum wage?

The short answer is: Not many. But in a way, that's also the wrong question.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.57 million Americans, or 2.1 percent of the hourly workforce, earned the minimum wage in 2012. More than 60 percent of them either worked in retail or in leisure and hospitality, which is to say hotels and restaurants, including fast-food chains.

If you want to honestly debate the merits of raising the minimum wage, however, you need to think beyond who earns it today. After all, there are millions of workers making $8 or $9 an hour assembling burgers or changing sheets who might be affected by a hike. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if Washington increased the minimum to $10.10 as Obama would like, some 21.3 million employees would eventually be guaranteed a raise, assuming they kept their jobs. (Another 11.1 million might theoretically benefit if companies adjusted their whole wage scales upwards, which is what the light blue section on the chart shows. But that might just be wishful thinking on EPI's part.)*

In the end, we're talking about a policy that would give somewhere around 11 percent of workers a raise.

I thought minimum-wage earners were mostly just suburban teenagers. Is that true?

The Heritage Foundation would certainly like you to think so. Conservative groups often argue that, contrary to the image projected by of liberals, most of the minimum wage workforce isn't really made up of desperate parents struggling to make ends meet. Instead, they say, it consists of middle-class teens and married women who live above the poverty line but might, for instance, want to work part-time while raising young children.

They're not all wrong. Almost a third of minimum-wage workers are teenagers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, Heritage finds, 62 percent of those under 25 are enrolled in school. They're not necessarily planning to make a career folding snack wraps.