Why We Should Raise The Minimum Wage (INTERACTIVE)

Raise-The-Wage

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, and soon after signed an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for the individuals working on new federal service contracts.

Raising the minimum wage nationwide will increase earnings for millions of workers, and boost the bottom lines of businesses across the country. Learn more below, and share this page with your friends and family.

This first map shows the current minimum wage for each state, as well as the number of workers in each state that would be affected by raising the wage to $10.10.

Choose a resource on the right side of the map, and click on a state for more information.

In this second map, you’ll see how raising the wage could help workers make ends meet. For example, a $10.10 wage could, over the course of a year, help a full-time, full-year minimum-wage worker in Arizona afford either 4 months of rent, 24 weeks of groceries, 68 tanks of gas, or the equivalent of 31 months of electricity.

Raising the federal minimum wage would not only benefit more than 28 million workers across the country, but 19 million workers from all types of households would see a direct increase in their wages.

Minimum Wage Pie Chart

Today, the real value of the minimum wage has fallen by nearly one-third since its peak in 1968. And right now, a full-time minimum wage worker makes $14,500 a year, which leaves too many families struggling to make ends meet.

Minimum Wage Poverty Line

Samuel Warde
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