Stronger enforcement of labor standards that guard against wage theft, and updates to outdated standards-such as increasing the overtime threshold and eliminating the tipped minimum wage-would especially benefit low-income workers. Stolen pay can add up quickly for low-wage employees, and it can make the difference between making rent or facing eviction. Workers lose tens of billions of dollars a year due to wage theft, when employers fail to pay minimum wage, overtime, payroll taxes, or worker’s compensation premiums. However, given how opposed Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary is to even a modest increase, it’s unlikely that the new administration will take this action on behalf of workers. The rest of the country is long overdue for a raise too, and Trump has- at times-promised to give it to them. Some individual states also raised their minimum wages, which is correlated with faster wage growth for low-wage workers. He raised the minimum wage to $10.10 for all federal contractors, many of whom work at poverty-level wages. For people who rely on the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour-disproportionately women and people of color-the struggle can be even harder.Ĭongress has failed to raise the federal minimum wage for seven years, so Obama relied on executive action when he could. Full-time, year-round minimum wage workers don’t make enough to support a single person, much less a family. The problem is that their wages are too low.
Raise the Minimum Wageĭespite what some policymakers and pundits suggest, a significant share of poor people already work-and their wages and benefits from that work are their main source of income. It should also take steps-some of which were taken by President Obama-to make sure these jobs make it possible for people to support themselves.
Obama learning on the job full#
It should work with the Federal Reserve to prioritize full employment, and make sure that we get there by keeping interest rates low until there is consistently strong wage growth. If the next administration genuinely wants to create decent jobs, it will need to do much more than strike piecemeal deals with individual companies. Along with a strong safety net, decent jobs and wages for low-income people and their families is one of the most effective methods of reducing poverty. There are still too few jobs, too few hours, and too slow wage growth for millions of people who are willing and able to work. Income rose for the typical American household, and the poverty rate saw one of the largest single-year declines in almost 50 years-primarily due to improvements in the labor market.Īs steady as the recovery has been, the United States has not yet reached a full employment economy. In 2015, most Americans finally started to feel the benefits of the recovery. The rescue of the auto industry saved at least 1 million jobs, and kept an entire region out of a severe depression. In part, that’s due to President Obama’s Recovery Act, which stimulated growth, provided aid to states, and invested in infrastructure. During the past six years, there has been job growth each and every month, and a 5 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate. This post originally appeared on .ĭuring his 2016 presidential campaign, president-elect Donald Trump promised that if he was elected, “the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.” Creating good-paying and high-quality jobs is definitely a worthwhile goal for the president to increase Americans’ living standards and decrease poverty.ĭespite the president-elect’s claim that there are “no jobs,” the labor market has improved at a remarkably steady rate as the country worked its way out of the deep recession.
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