Minimum Wage Hike Won't Go Far

Tara Dennis, 23, poses for a portrait with her sons Gavin Butcher, 1, left, and Payton Butcher, 3, right, in her Missoula, Mont., apartment Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006. Two months into her minimum wage job at Target Corp., Dennis realized she and her three children would be better off if she was unemployed and on food stamps. Dennis now takes care of her three children in the morning and works an evening shift at the DirecTV call center in Missoula. (AP Photo/Brian McDermott) (Brian Mcdermott - AP)

"It got to the point where if I wasn't working there, I could be with my kids and pay my bills," said Dennis, who lives in Missoula, Mont.

Montana was among states that passed minimum wage increases in the November election, along with Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and Ohio.

Herman (Mack) McCowan, 61, of Cleveland, was active in the Ohio office of Let Justice Roll, an organization that advocated for a higher minimum wage. In Ohio, the minimum wage increased from $5.15 to $6.85 and will now be indexed to inflation.

"At $5.15 an hour, you can't really extend yourself, you only exist," he said. McCowan worked for four years as a day laborer, making $5.15 an hour, before landing a $6 an-hour job at a community center.

With the roughly $80 a week a full-time worker would have after the federal wage hike, "You're able to afford a telephone, able to pay your light bill on time, able to pay your rent," he said.

If there are two people at home "it will allow you to put a little more food on the table, sustain yourself a little bit better than before," McCowan said. "You will be able to relieve a lot of the stress."

Stagnating wages for unskilled workers coupled with increased housing costs have put more working people at risk of being homeless. For instance, about 28 percent of homeless adults in Louisville, Kentucky homeless shelters are working, according to the Louisville Coalition for the Homeless.

One-quarter of hourly workers who make minimum wage are teenagers, but about half are older than 25, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For some workers, a job near minimum wage is their only option. Paula Berrios, 66, helps support her daughter and grandchildren in El Salvador working in a hotel kitchen for $7.18 an hour. Berrios, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, does not speak English.

"I'm desperate," she said, speaking through a translator. "That's all I can get."

At the current minimum wage, households where everyone who works makes minimum wage would need more than three full-time workers to pay market rent on a two-bedroom apartment in New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, California, Colorado and Nevada, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

A jump to $7.25 would make a two-bedroom apartment affordable to families with two minimum wage earners in all but 19 states, said Danilo Pelletiere, research director at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

"If you're a single mom or dad with a kid, who can't sleep in one room, you're still out of luck," he said. But for families with more than one full-time minimum wage earner, an increase could cut the number of jobs they would need to work, he said.

In some areas, especially where the cost of living is high, pay for low-skill jobs has already surpassed $7.25 an hour.

"Eight dollars an hour is a starting wage for a dishwasher," said Paul Turley, owner of Turley's Restaurant in Boulder, Colorado. "The minimum wage in Colorado is really a non-issue."

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Ellen Simon is a national business beat reporter for The Associated Press, covering labor and workplace issues. Write to her at esimon(at)ap.org.