I see this stat a lot and it leaves me wondering how many people are within, say, 50 cents or 5%[0] of minimum wage. The percent of workers earning minimum wage doesn't seem that useful (and I guess neither would the figures returned for my request).
In any case I'd find hours required to live alone within ~30 minutes of work a more compelling statistic. It adjusts for CoL and represents a reasonable lifestyle to shoot for.
0: not suggesting these are equivalent figures
* Person A is making minimum wage, but with good benefits, consistent hours, and a reasonable cost to live within walking distance of the job.
* Person B is making minimum wage plus a buck per hour, but is technically not a full-time employee so no benefits at all. Shifts are often changed with little notice, sometimes to hours that are not very transit-friendly, and living within walking distance is utterly off the table for anyone short of a rich techie.
Who's really better off? It's easy for full-time internet commentators to look at simplistic stats and draw simplistic (self serving) conclusions, but your metric is much better and closer to the ones used by people who actually study issues such as poverty.
That is incorrect. There are whole categories of jobs that are exempt from minimum wage, and that doesn't even count gig work.
I'm presuming you're talking about tipped jobs? It seems reasonable to presume that they earn close to minimum wage when factoring in tips, otherwise people would switch to non-exempt jobs.
But we're seeing this in the US, between covid restaurant layoffs and closures; Tipped dining service is struggling to recruit.
Having said that, most tipped employees are doing much, much better…which is why they aren’t clamoring to go wash dishes in the back.
https://www.minimum-wage.org/articles/minimum-wage-exemption...
This anecdote is presented as the norm, but it’s actually far from it.
“Minimum wage” is the tip off that the journalist went out searching for the most extreme anecdote they could find. For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. That number is falling rapidly as it becomes trivial for anyone to walk into a $15/hr job with benefits almost anywhere except the smallest towns.
Of course it’s not possible for someone earning minimum wage to save up money and buy a house in their 20s. Minimum wage jobs are literally the lowest paying jobs a person could possibly find. Anchoring expectations that no job should exist unless it pays enough to buy a house in your 20s in any city you want is blatantly unrealistic.