Vermont Needs Livable Wages Now.
Vermont Needs Livable Wages Now.
The Issue
Time and time again, multiple representatives & articles will posit that the state of Vermont needs young families to stay there or move there to help replace the majority of the population aging out of the workforce. Unfortunately, as housing has become less accessible/affordable, the current minimum wage falls behind even when it will reach 15$/hour in 2025. When FDR made the case for the minimum wage he can be quoted as saying "It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
If wages in Vermont do not ensure a better quality of life, employees in the state cannot ensure a better quality of work. For all the effort Vermonters & transplants have put into the state to make it a lovely tourist destination, the state should seek to reinvest in the residents that make this possible to make it even better.
Now here's the research; According to the Living Wage Calculator at MIT, the livable wage for 2 working adults with 1 child is 23.38 per hour per person, yet the state minimum wage is only 13.67, and the federal minimum wage has remained 7.25 since 2009; in the face of ever increasing costs, the federal minimum wage has not budged in 15 years. This calculator also posits that a livable wage for a single adult with no children is 23.02 per hour. So even as the wage crawls towards 15, 15$/hr as a minimum is not enough to live on in Vermont now. A higher minimum wage also bears the potential to create a competitive advantage in hiring, as businesses will have a larger pool of qualified potential candidates for employment to choose from, as a higher starting wage is viewed more favorably by job seekers (per LinkedIn).
https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/50
Added citations:
- Between 1979 and 2024, productivity in the U.S. rose 80.9%, while hourly pay grew by only 29.4%
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
- More than costs or prices, low and stagnant wages are the reason Vermonters cannot make ends meet. Compared with the U.S. as a whole, Vermont’s prices are average. But wages are low—almost 20 percent below the national average. Vermont also has the second-lowest wages among the New England states.
https://publicassets.org/library/publications/reports/its-time-to-raise-vermonts-minimum-wage/
- More than a decade’s worth of research indicates that increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage is an effective means of improving public health across many settings (Leigh, 2016).
https://vtpha.org/Minimum-Wage
- In our advocacy to raise the minimum wage over the past few years, we’ve heard a number of misleading, incorrect talking points over and over in response to our efforts. We wanted to address the most common of those quickly and concisely.
- " Living wages can promote a more motivated and productive workforce, by improving morale and commitment. These benefits also link to reduced absenteeism, better health, and greater economic security. Up to 4/5 of employers Indicate that work quality increased once they introduced living wages"
Per THE CASE FOR LIVING WAGES research paper by Anna Barford, Richard Gilbert, Annabel Beales, Marina Zorila and Jane Nelson via University of Cambridge
- "More than 50% of wage earners cannot afford a modest one-bedroom rental home at the FMR while working one full-time job. More than 60% of wage earners cannot afford a modest two-bedroom rental home while working one full-time job. Of the nation’s 20 most common occupations, 14 of them pay median wages lower than the wage needed by a full-time worker to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment. These 14 occupations account for more than 64 million workers, or 42% of the workforce. For example, the median hourly wages of food servers and retail workers are $14.85 and $15.73, respectively — significantly less than the full-time wage of $26.74 needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment at the FMR."
Per the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) Out of Reach report
- Low wages, more than high prices, continued to stymie Vermonters struggling to make ends meet. In 2021 Vermont’s average annual wage of $56,296 was 83 percent of the national average, ranking 33rd in the U.S. The state’s wage also came in second lowest in New England, where the average annual wage ranged from $54,651 in Maine to $87,752 in Massachusetts.
- State research confirms economic benefit of minimum wage hikes
https://hiappleseed.org/blog/state-research-confirms-economic-benefit-minimum-wage-hikes
- "Indeed, the research suggests that small businesses don't appear to cut jobs in response to an increase in the minimum wage, and may actually benefit from it instead. 'a minimum wage increase doesn’t kill jobs,” the researchers explain. “It kills job vacancies, not jobs. The higher wage makes it easier to recruit workers and retain them. Turnover rates go down. Other research shows that those workers are likely to be a little more productive, as well".”
- "The biggest benefit of living wage is the idea of trying to tie how much workers should earn to some measure of what people think is fair for workers to earn. I think the whole movement of a living wage really highlights the idea that working should support some minimal level of living standards. It's just that basic connection between what workers earn to a decent living standard is the most important thing about the living wage movement, generally. I think it also pushes us to think about how much higher we could pay workers and how much higher the wage floor could go. Right now the minimum wage laws that we have at the state level and the federal level are historically pretty low. So raising the whole idea of a living wage really makes you think about how much higher should the wage floor be instead of constantly, you know, tinkering around the edges about what the minimum wage is. It makes you think about what would actually be a fair wage, and the living wage ordinances have really pushed much higher wage rates than what states and the federal government has offered in terms of minimum wage"
Per Arguments for a Living Wage in the United States, 2012
- "A $15 minimum wage could benefit nearly 40 million workers and provide some of the lowest-wage workers with an average annual wage boost of about $6,000."
- In this month’s Hamilton Project economic analysis, we consider the likely magnitude of the effects of a minimum wage increase on the number and share of workers affected. Considering that near-minimum wage workers would also be affected, we find that an increase could raise the wages of up to 35 million workers—that’s 29.4 percent of the workforce.For the purpose of this analysis, we set aside the important issue of potential employment effects, which is another crucial element in the debate about an optimal minimum wage policy. We also continue to explore the nation’s “jobs gap,” or the number of jobs needed to return to pre-recession employment levels.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-ripple-effect-of-a-minimum-wage-increase-on-american-workers/
- The root of the staffing challenge is simple: Vermont’s population is rapidly aging. More than a fifth of Vermonters are 65 or older, and more than 35 percent are over 54, the age at which Americans typically begin to exit the work force. No state has a smaller share of its residents in their prime working years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/12/business/economy/vermont-labor-shortage.html
- Starting in the late 1970s policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers’ wages grew with productivity. Excess unemployment was tolerated to keep any chance of inflation in check. Raises in the federal minimum wage became smaller and rarer. Labor law failed to keep pace with growing employer hostility toward unions. Tax rates on top incomes were lowered. And anti-worker deregulatory pushes—from the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries to the retreat of anti-trust policy to the dismantling of financial regulations and more—succeeded again and again. In essence, policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented potential pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result of this policy shift was the sharp divergence between productivity and typical workers’ pay shown in the graph. From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).
- All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor." (1937, Message to Congress upon introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act)
It took five years from F.D.R.'s first inauguration in 1933 to enact the federal minimum wage. The period encompassed "Black Monday" on May 27, 1935, when the Supreme Court invalidated the new labor standards in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, and "White Monday" on March 29, 1937, when the Court reversed course by upholding the minimum wage in Washington state, setting the stage for passage of a federal version.
Today, with census data showing that one third of Americans are either in or near poverty, the arguments in favor of an adequate minimum wage are still compelling. The difference is that the minimum wage has gone from being a bold advance in labor law to a basic tool for broader prosperity, albeit one that Congress has failed to deploy fully. That is a shame. What F.D.R. said in 1938 about establishing a minimum wage is also true about raising it: "Without question it starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products of farm and factory.
148
The Issue
Time and time again, multiple representatives & articles will posit that the state of Vermont needs young families to stay there or move there to help replace the majority of the population aging out of the workforce. Unfortunately, as housing has become less accessible/affordable, the current minimum wage falls behind even when it will reach 15$/hour in 2025. When FDR made the case for the minimum wage he can be quoted as saying "It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living."
If wages in Vermont do not ensure a better quality of life, employees in the state cannot ensure a better quality of work. For all the effort Vermonters & transplants have put into the state to make it a lovely tourist destination, the state should seek to reinvest in the residents that make this possible to make it even better.
Now here's the research; According to the Living Wage Calculator at MIT, the livable wage for 2 working adults with 1 child is 23.38 per hour per person, yet the state minimum wage is only 13.67, and the federal minimum wage has remained 7.25 since 2009; in the face of ever increasing costs, the federal minimum wage has not budged in 15 years. This calculator also posits that a livable wage for a single adult with no children is 23.02 per hour. So even as the wage crawls towards 15, 15$/hr as a minimum is not enough to live on in Vermont now. A higher minimum wage also bears the potential to create a competitive advantage in hiring, as businesses will have a larger pool of qualified potential candidates for employment to choose from, as a higher starting wage is viewed more favorably by job seekers (per LinkedIn).
https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/50
Added citations:
- Between 1979 and 2024, productivity in the U.S. rose 80.9%, while hourly pay grew by only 29.4%
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
- More than costs or prices, low and stagnant wages are the reason Vermonters cannot make ends meet. Compared with the U.S. as a whole, Vermont’s prices are average. But wages are low—almost 20 percent below the national average. Vermont also has the second-lowest wages among the New England states.
https://publicassets.org/library/publications/reports/its-time-to-raise-vermonts-minimum-wage/
- More than a decade’s worth of research indicates that increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage is an effective means of improving public health across many settings (Leigh, 2016).
https://vtpha.org/Minimum-Wage
- In our advocacy to raise the minimum wage over the past few years, we’ve heard a number of misleading, incorrect talking points over and over in response to our efforts. We wanted to address the most common of those quickly and concisely.
- " Living wages can promote a more motivated and productive workforce, by improving morale and commitment. These benefits also link to reduced absenteeism, better health, and greater economic security. Up to 4/5 of employers Indicate that work quality increased once they introduced living wages"
Per THE CASE FOR LIVING WAGES research paper by Anna Barford, Richard Gilbert, Annabel Beales, Marina Zorila and Jane Nelson via University of Cambridge
- "More than 50% of wage earners cannot afford a modest one-bedroom rental home at the FMR while working one full-time job. More than 60% of wage earners cannot afford a modest two-bedroom rental home while working one full-time job. Of the nation’s 20 most common occupations, 14 of them pay median wages lower than the wage needed by a full-time worker to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment. These 14 occupations account for more than 64 million workers, or 42% of the workforce. For example, the median hourly wages of food servers and retail workers are $14.85 and $15.73, respectively — significantly less than the full-time wage of $26.74 needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment at the FMR."
Per the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) Out of Reach report
- Low wages, more than high prices, continued to stymie Vermonters struggling to make ends meet. In 2021 Vermont’s average annual wage of $56,296 was 83 percent of the national average, ranking 33rd in the U.S. The state’s wage also came in second lowest in New England, where the average annual wage ranged from $54,651 in Maine to $87,752 in Massachusetts.
- State research confirms economic benefit of minimum wage hikes
https://hiappleseed.org/blog/state-research-confirms-economic-benefit-minimum-wage-hikes
- "Indeed, the research suggests that small businesses don't appear to cut jobs in response to an increase in the minimum wage, and may actually benefit from it instead. 'a minimum wage increase doesn’t kill jobs,” the researchers explain. “It kills job vacancies, not jobs. The higher wage makes it easier to recruit workers and retain them. Turnover rates go down. Other research shows that those workers are likely to be a little more productive, as well".”
- "The biggest benefit of living wage is the idea of trying to tie how much workers should earn to some measure of what people think is fair for workers to earn. I think the whole movement of a living wage really highlights the idea that working should support some minimal level of living standards. It's just that basic connection between what workers earn to a decent living standard is the most important thing about the living wage movement, generally. I think it also pushes us to think about how much higher we could pay workers and how much higher the wage floor could go. Right now the minimum wage laws that we have at the state level and the federal level are historically pretty low. So raising the whole idea of a living wage really makes you think about how much higher should the wage floor be instead of constantly, you know, tinkering around the edges about what the minimum wage is. It makes you think about what would actually be a fair wage, and the living wage ordinances have really pushed much higher wage rates than what states and the federal government has offered in terms of minimum wage"
Per Arguments for a Living Wage in the United States, 2012
- "A $15 minimum wage could benefit nearly 40 million workers and provide some of the lowest-wage workers with an average annual wage boost of about $6,000."
- In this month’s Hamilton Project economic analysis, we consider the likely magnitude of the effects of a minimum wage increase on the number and share of workers affected. Considering that near-minimum wage workers would also be affected, we find that an increase could raise the wages of up to 35 million workers—that’s 29.4 percent of the workforce.For the purpose of this analysis, we set aside the important issue of potential employment effects, which is another crucial element in the debate about an optimal minimum wage policy. We also continue to explore the nation’s “jobs gap,” or the number of jobs needed to return to pre-recession employment levels.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-ripple-effect-of-a-minimum-wage-increase-on-american-workers/
- The root of the staffing challenge is simple: Vermont’s population is rapidly aging. More than a fifth of Vermonters are 65 or older, and more than 35 percent are over 54, the age at which Americans typically begin to exit the work force. No state has a smaller share of its residents in their prime working years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/12/business/economy/vermont-labor-shortage.html
- Starting in the late 1970s policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers’ wages grew with productivity. Excess unemployment was tolerated to keep any chance of inflation in check. Raises in the federal minimum wage became smaller and rarer. Labor law failed to keep pace with growing employer hostility toward unions. Tax rates on top incomes were lowered. And anti-worker deregulatory pushes—from the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries to the retreat of anti-trust policy to the dismantling of financial regulations and more—succeeded again and again. In essence, policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented potential pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result of this policy shift was the sharp divergence between productivity and typical workers’ pay shown in the graph. From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).
- All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor." (1937, Message to Congress upon introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act)
It took five years from F.D.R.'s first inauguration in 1933 to enact the federal minimum wage. The period encompassed "Black Monday" on May 27, 1935, when the Supreme Court invalidated the new labor standards in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, and "White Monday" on March 29, 1937, when the Court reversed course by upholding the minimum wage in Washington state, setting the stage for passage of a federal version.
Today, with census data showing that one third of Americans are either in or near poverty, the arguments in favor of an adequate minimum wage are still compelling. The difference is that the minimum wage has gone from being a bold advance in labor law to a basic tool for broader prosperity, albeit one that Congress has failed to deploy fully. That is a shame. What F.D.R. said in 1938 about establishing a minimum wage is also true about raising it: "Without question it starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products of farm and factory.
148
The Decision Makers
Supporter Voices
Petition created on June 21, 2024