First, no one is bragging they can or want to live on $7.25/hr, that’s a strawman. But the idea that people are actually working full-time at $7.25 is a bigger fantasy than this reality show idea. Workers earning the federal min wage are unicorns, here’s the data:
▪️Out of 76.1M workers who are paid at hourly rates, just 0.2% earn the Federal min wage of $7.25/hr. Only 0.1%, just 58K out of 76M hourly workers, are full-time. If you count all workers, only 0.04% work full-time at $7.25. They just don’t exist.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2021/home.htm
▪️There are a measurable amount (1.2% of hourly-paid workers) who earn below the fed min wage. Sometimes you’ll hear “at or below min wage” to describe them. But the min wage already doesn’t apply to these workers, so who are they?
▪️Some are intern-type jobs, but the vast majority, according to the BLS, are service jobs, leisure and hospitality in particular. And as the BLS admits, “For many of these workers, tips may supplement the hourly wages received.”
▪️Thus, the tiny fraction of workers who earn at or below the min wage are workers earning tips, which is why they accept such a low hourly rate. After all, even the lowest fast food jobs now pay much higher than $7.25.
▪️In fact, American workers now avg $33.03/hr, even production and nonsupervisory workers avg $28.26/hr. The lowest paid sectors are retail trade ($20.19/hr) and leisure & hospitality ($18.21/hr.) No one is working for $7.25, let alone a hard working full-timer.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t24.htm
▪️The positive thing about not raising the fed min wage for so long is we can see that it has no effect on raising the bar. In fact, the opposite. Unemployment continues to fall, while wages rise, albeit dampened by inflation (though the lowest paid jobs are keeping up with inflation).
▪️The narrative that, without the min wage employers would pay slave wages, is obviously not the case. And the longer it’s not raised the weaker the argument is for it. Which the left hates, so they continue to harp on fantasies about the unicorn workers making $7.25/hr.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
