A Living Wage

I've always been a friend of the library, but since we moved to Fairfield I have found myself strolling through the aisles of books much more often. Currently I am reading Nickel and Dimed, in which the author, Barbara Ehrenreich goes "undercover" to see if it is possible to support herself in various regions of the country from wages she earns as a waitress, a housecleaner, and a Wal-Mart employee. Even with a start up savings account and no dependents, Enrenreich finds that she can not sustain an adequate standard of living on her wages.

This book was written between 1998 and 2000, but I have found that the core issues she addresses are still prevalent today, 10 years later. Minimum wage jobs just don't pay all of the bills. What employees really need are jobs that pay a living wage.

So what is a living wage? It is a wage that a worker would need to earn to meet the minimum standards of living. It is calculated based on costs of living specific to a person's geographic region and the size of his household. In most places, the living wage exceeds the minimum wage, yet ironically, a majority of the working poor only earns the bare minimum or just slightly above it.

In Ohio the minimum wage is set at $7.25/hour. In Fairfield, the living wage for one adult is $8.63/hour. And according to the living wage chart, a sole provider (or wage earner) for two adults would need to earn $13.64/hour to support only themselves, no children. Because Taylor and I both work and have no kids, let's see if his and my wages add up to the $13.64/hour living wage for two adults.

Taylor works about 35 hours a week at $7.65/hour. I report to Shared Harvest 40 hours a week and before taxes, I receive $395 in my biweekly living allowance. For the purposes of this exercise, when I calculate my hourly wage, it divides out to $4.94/hour. So with our wages added together, we are earning a combined $12.59/hour. Not quite a living wage by Fairfield's standards, about a dollar/hour short. The extra income Taylor earns from his second part-time job makes up for some of that, but not all.

Given this information, you can see why so many millions of American families work two or three jobs at a time. It isn't always enough to just "get a job." Most low-skilled laborers are paid only the minimum wage (and no benefits, of course), leaving a significant gap between their wages and the necessary expenses to maintain the minimum standard of living. I strongly believe that if we were to recalculate the federal poverty income guidelines using living wages as a determining factor, we would find a much higher poverty rate than already exists. So why haven't the federal poverty standards been modernized? Because if we saw the true numbers of people living in poverty, we would actually have to do something about it.

I'm curious--do you earn a living wage? Check out this link to find out the living wage for your area: http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/ and leave me a comment with your findings.