7 Days @ Minimum Wage: 70 Percent Making Minimum Wage Are Adults with Families

by James Parks, Oct 25, 2006

Throughout the week, millions of Americans are hearing, seeing and getting a sense of what it’s like to try and live at or near the minimum wage at the video blog (vlog): “7 Days at Minimum Wage.”

The Oct. 23–30 event, sponsored by the AFL-CIO and ACORN, features interviews with seven workers describing life at or near the federal minimum wage, which has not been raised from $5.15 an hour since 1997.

The vlog’s host, comedienne Roseanne Barr, introduces this installment with a very telling statistic, saying raising the minimum wage is:

not about teenagers working for pocket change at a hamburger joint because 70 percent of people working at minimum wage are adults with family responsibilities.

Today, in the third installment, Jeffrey Edwards, who makes just above the minimum wage, $6 an hour, tells what it’s like to try and support a family working at a job that pays so little. The sole breadwinner for his family, which includes a two-month old son, Edwards’ full-time jobs leaves him with $350 take-home pay every two weeks. Out of that, he has to pay all the family bills:

That’s gotta pay the light bill, put half back for rent and then whatever groceries we can buy, buying diapers and formula until we can get some assistance [for his son].

In the first installment of “7 Days @ Minimum Wage,” Monday, we met Paul Greg Valdez and his partner, Susan Windham, who try to live on the $35 a day Paul brings home after his back-breaking work in construction. Yesterday, we met Erin, who’s trapped in a dead-end job with no immediate hope of getting out.

For all of them, raising the minimum wage is a matter of being able to live one day without struggling. As Edwards says:

It’s hard. I live day by day. I struggle every day to do it. Some days I wonder where my next meal is gonna come from.

The AFL-CIO union movement has spearheaded the America Needs a Raise campaign to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal levels. The campaign has provided momentum to put the issue of raising the minimum wage on the Nov. 7 ballot in six states: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio. (Congress will be in session for a few days after Nov. 7. Tell your lawmakers: It’s time for a real vote to raise the minimum wage. Send an e-mail here.)

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