Wages And Job Market

Here’s some statistics if we were to decide that $15/hr is a suitable wage in comparison to today’s cost of living.

There are just under 332,000,000 citizens of the US (1). There are approximately 164.6 million people available for work in the US, aged 16 and older (2). Of those available for work as of January 2019, ~25 million were making $11 or less per hour, and ~70 million were making $15 or less per hour (3). In other words, just under half of all Americans who are available for work, work at, or less than, a wage suitable for the cost of living.

One argument is to, “just get a job making more. Don’t blame others for your short comings and inability to get a decent job. All it takes is hard work!”

Here’s some more statistics. There are ~142 million available jobs in the US currently (4). Based on the numbers above, that means there are ~22 million Americans that are unable to get a job, simply because there aren’t enough to go around – not due to laziness or an inability to “work hard.” Furthermore, of the 142 million jobs available, 70 million of those jobs are only offering $15 or less (3). That means that only 72 million out of 142 million can “work hard” enough to obtain something higher than a livable wage – and that’s assuming $15 an hour is a livable wage by today’s cost of living. However, it doesn’t end there. About 13 million US workers work more than one job due to working a wage that doesn’t meet the cost of living in the first place (5). That means that there are approximately 35 million Americans that can’t get a job at all, simply due to the amount of jobs available. You aren’t talking about a handful of lazy people trying to abuse the system. You aren’t talking a few hundred, or thousand, or even hundreds of thousands. You’re talking 35,000,000 individuals – nearly 1/5 of the entire US labor force is unable to get a job based on supply and demand alone.

In conclusion, nearly half of all working Americans make something equal to, or less than, a livable wage, with no way to rise above that other than luck. If half of all jobs offer something above a hypothetical livable wage, then half of us must suffer, and hard work has little to do with it. To say that a $15 minimum wage is too high, is to say that half of America deserves to struggle to make ends meet.

A fifth of available workers are unable to get a job due to the amount of jobs available. The ability to provide for oneself should be a right, not a privilege. We need enough jobs to meet the supply and demand of those available for work, and all jobs should offer a wage that reflects the cost of living of that time. Anything less is the result of a broken system.