(1)
Large, Profitable Companies Employ Most Minimum-Wage
Earners
George Zornick
The Nation
July 19, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/168969/large-profitable-companies-employ-most-minimum-wage-earners#

If you've ever had a conversation about the minimum wage
with friends and family, you invariably hear an argument
about how raising it would hurt small businesses.

There is compelling academic research that increasing
the minimum wage doesn't dramatically impact employment
levels, but a new study released today underscores
another important point-most people earning minimum wage
work for large, profitable corporations.

The National Employment Law Project looked at Census
data from 2009-11 and found that 66 percent of low-wage
workers are employed by large businesses with over 100
employees. Moreover, it found that the fifty largest
employers of low-wage workers have all recovered from
the recession and are in strong financial positions:

    92 percent were profitable last year.

    78 percent have been profitable for the last three
    years.

    75 percent have higher revenues now than before the
    recession, and 73 percent have higher cash holdings.

    63 percent have higher operating margins than before
    the recession.

Also, the study found that at these fifty firms,
executive compensation averaged $9.4 million, and they
have returned $174.8 billion to shareholders in
dividends or share buybacks in the past five years.

Low-wage workers are concentrated in the service
industry, and dominate the following sectors:

Top five low-wage industries:

Industry                             Percent low wage
_______________________________________________
Food Service                               57.4
Accomodation                               40.0
Retail Trade                               36.5
Arts, Entertainment, Recreation            34.2
Administrative Services                    33.2


You can guess from looking at that list who the biggest
abusers of low-wage labor are. Walmart, for example,
employs 1.4 million Americans, and a vast majority of
them at wages under $10 per hour. The highest-paid
executive, however, earned over $18.4 million last year.
Other key offenders are Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza
Hut, KFC), McDonald's, Target, Sears, Doctor's
Associates Inc (Subway), TJMaxx and Burger King.

Amazingly, one in four American jobs pays less than $10
per hour (26 percent), according to the study. And it's
not just those workers who suffer-big businesses that
pay collectively pay millions of workers low wages set a
basement for the rest of the wage scale and depress
earnings above $10, too.

As we noted last month, some Congressional Democrats
have joined forces with Ralph Nader to pass a bill that
would raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour
immediately, and then index it to the Consumer Price
Index after one year.

But they are unlikely to find many allies on the other
side of the aisle. This week, Representative Sean Duffy,
a Tea Party star, was taped getting in a Jetta and
driving away from a constituent asking him for help in
raising the minimum wage.

Another, Representative Bill Young of Florida, somewhat
oddly told a constituent asking about the minimum wage
to "get a job" before walking away.

(2)
Nearly 3 Years, and Counting: Minimum Wage Increase 
Helps Working Families and The Economy
by Doug Hall	
EPI
July 19, 2012
http://www.epi.org/blog/minimum-wage-increase-helps-working-families-economy/

[moderator: please use the link above to view the
referenced charts and graphs]

At the end of March, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin introduced the
Rebuild America Act, a bill that contains important
provisions to strengthen the economy and improve the
well-being of working Americans. Among the many worthy
elements of this bill is a proposal to increase the
federal minimum wage to $9.80 by July 1, 2014. Next week
will mark the third anniversary of the most recent
increase in the federal minimum wage. Rather than
increase the federal minimum wage annually to allow low-
income workers to maintain their standard of living and
share in the fruits of their ever-more productive labor
as should be the case, Congress too often raises the
minimum wage and then puts the well-being of low-wage
workers on the back burner for years at a stretch.

As my colleague David Cooper wrote in April, increasing
the federal minimum wage to $9.80 by July 1, 2014 would
benefit over 28 million workers and increase national
GDP by over $25 billion, in the process creating over
100,000 jobs. Given the lackluster recovery that
continues to cast a pall over the nation, this positive
step should be embraced by all those who care about the
well-being of working families.

In a forthcoming paper, I'll be detailing the
demographic characteristics of those affected by
increasing the minimum wage as proposed by Harkin (a
proposal that has been mirrored in Conn. Rep. Rosa
DeLauro's Rebuild America Act and in a bill for which
Calif. Rep. George Miller is currently gathering
support). This paper will also highlight the state level
impact of the proposed increase, breaking out state-
specific demographic impacts and also highlighting the
economic and employment impacts.

Here are a few graphs to whet your collective appetites:

Figure 1: Educational attainment

As seen in Figure 1, over three-quarters of those
affected by the proposed increase to $9.80 have
completed high school or more, including 42.3 percent
who have completed some college, have an associates
degree, a bachelor's degree, or more.

Figure 2: Race/ethnicity of those affected

As seen in Figure 2, nationally, well over half of those
affected by increasing the minimum wage to $9.80 are
white and about a quarter are Hispanic. Black workers
account for 14.2 percent of those affected, and the
balance, 6.1 percent, are either Asian or other.

Figure 3: Work hours

Figure 3 shows that the perception of minimum-wage
workers as high school students working to earn spending
money is largely incorrect. Instead, we see that a
majority are full-time workers. In fact, only 15 percent
of those affected work part-time (defined here as
working less than 20 hours a week).

Figure 4: Family income

Finally, as seen in Figure 4, over half of those
affected belong to families with family income of less
than $40,000 a year. While the weak economic recovery
has taken a toll on families across the economic
continuum, its effects have been felt most acutely by
those with low and very low incomes. For these families,
raising the minimum wage will have a demonstrable impact
on their family income.

This is exactly the right time to raise the minimum
wage. Doing so in a weak economy not only helps those
who most need help, it also provides an immediate boost
to the economy, generating additional economic activity
that benefits everyone. These charts (coupled with the
more extensive data available in Cooper's blog linked
above) demonstrate who stands to benefit from increasing
the federal minimum wage to $9.80. Next week, when a
series of "Days of Action" take place in cities
throughout the nation in support of increasing the
minimum wage, we should all be thinking of the minimum-
wage workers staffing our favorite restaurants, cleaning
the rooms in our vacation hotels, or stocking the
shelves in our local grocery stores. Their faces are the
faces of America's minimum-wage workforce. But take a
look in the mirror also, since we all benefit from the
positive economic impact of increasing the minimum wage.

___________________________________________

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