Pros And Cons Of State Minimum Wage

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Pages: 6
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Ukarajit Clifford Wilfred
Rashad Ahmed
English 1020
7 November 2016
The Pros and Cons of Raising States’ Minimum Wage

The concept of state minimum wage has been a very controversial subject in the USA. With twenty-nine states including the District of Columbia having wage above the federal, five states have no minimum wage law therefore federal minimum wage apply in most cases and two states have minimum wage below the federal minimum wage (National Conference of State Legislatures). Tennessee's minimum wage is $7.25 per hour which is the same as the federal minimum wage. Recently, G.A. Hardaway, State Representative, introduced a legislation to raise the state's minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour ("Policy Brief: The Impact …show more content…
It was $8.00 per hour from 1 January 2008 to 30 June 2013 (State of California Department of Industrial Relations). While the state of California's minimum wage was raised during this period, the state of Tennessee's minimum wage remained the same as the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. And from the United States Census Bureau, in the period between 2013 to 2015, California with higher minimum wage than Tennessee, had a median household’s income of $62,017.00 which is higher compared to Tennessee's median households’ income of $45,072.00 (United States Census Bureau).
Alaska with minimum wage of $8.75 per hour in 2015 had a poverty rate of 9.2%, California with $9.00 per hour had a poverty rate of $13.9% while Tennessee and Mississippi with minimum wage same as the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour had a poverty rate of 14.7% and 19.1% respectively (The United States Census Bureau). This shows that states with higher minimum wage has lower poverty rate compared to states with minimum wage that is equal to the federal minimum wage with exception to New Hampshire which has poverty rate of 7.3% and a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour which is the same as the federal minimum …show more content…
Some states with minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage still have crime rate on the rise and have higher unemployment rates than states with minimum wage equal to the federal minimum wage. Also most employees would campaign for a higher minimum wage to increase their earning while most employers would want the minimum wage to remain the same or be equal to the minimum wage if possible to cut their cost and increase their profit. But there is a question that is left unaddressed here, and that’s the curiosity about a better shift in minimum wage. “Which shift in minimum wage would yield more favorable conditions? And which shift would have more benefit than
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