The California minimum wage could rise to $18 an hour by 2025 under a plan by entrepreneur Joe Sandberg. If approved, the 2022 initiative would make California the state with the highest minimum wage in the country.
By January 1, California will have a minimum wage of $15 per hour for larger companies with more than 25 employees. For those with 25 or fewer, they have until 2023 to reach $15 per hour.
Under Sandbergs proposal, California minimum wage would increase $1 each year until Jan. 1 of 2025—for smaller companies, they would have until 2026 to reach $18. After the state reaches $18, minimum wage would increase each year after by the rate of inflation up to 3.5%.
According to the Living Wage Act of 2022:
- A: The purpose of The Living Wage Act of 2022 (“the Act”) is to ensure that workers receive wages that will financially support them and their families.
- B: To achieve this purpose, The Living Wage Act of 2022 will increase California minimum wage to $18 per hour by 2025 and in each year thereafter the minimum wage will be adjusted to keep pace with the cost of living in California.
- C: For more than 12 years, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25. If it had increased at the rate of productivity growth since 1960, it would be $24 right now.
- D: Many working Californians, including essential workers, parents and seniors, have full-time jobs yet struggle to meet ends meet. The minimum wage has not kept pace with the cost living and is worth less today than it was 50 years ago.
- E: California currently has the eight highest income inequality among all fifty US States and Washington, D.C., which is forcing many working households into poverty.
- F. The most recent available data, which does not include the effects of COVID-19, shows that more than 6.3 million Californians lack enough resources to meet their basic needs. More than a third of Californians are living in or near poverty. The large majority of California low-wage workers are adults, not teens. The average age for lower-wage workers is 36 compared to 40 for all workers. 46 percent of low-wage workers have children, and 40 percent are married. Californians cannot support a family on the current minimum wage of $15 per hour, or $31,200 per year, for people who work full time.
- G: Despite being employed full-time, Californians are paid the current minimum wage often must rely on the State’s social safety net to meet their basic needs. Californians’ wages are not keeping up with inflation or our states rising cost of living. Research finds that a single parent living in California with two children would need to make $50 an hour to get by, but our states minimum wage is only $15 per hour.
- H: The purchasing power of the minimum wage will continue to erode if it is not adjusted yearly to reflect increases to the cost of living.
- I: Raising the minimum wage will increase the earnings of many Medi-Cal recipients, making them eligible for federal subsidies on California health benefit exchange, saving the State millions of dollars a year in Med-Cal costs.
- J: Californians working in a wide variety of jobs and industries are paid the minimum wage, and is the goal of this Act to protect all such workers, regardless of whether they are employed by single, multiple or joint employers.
- K: Income inequality, a growing population of working poor, and wage stagnation in California create strong justification for boosting income-support for working households struggling to meet basic needs.
Source: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/21-0043%20%28Minimum%20Wage%29.pdf
3 comments
Every Trade Union is hiring right now. We have a generation of people that would rather not work,to learn a trade that would pay them well above minimum wage and great benefits .
Minimum wage for minimum skill!!
Yes!! More handout please!!
Reasonable minimum wage adjustments are justified, but the argument made herein is (in effect) that a “single parent of two” should be able to support a family on the legal minimum wage. That is faulty thinking. The minimum wage needs to remain reasonable to enable entry-level workers to get their foot into the labor market and for those who want or need to supplement their incomes. It also needs to remain reasonable to enable employers to hire low-skill labor without putting them out of business. Using it as a social engineering tool for income redistribution is not appropriate. The key to individuals “getting ahead” is to pursue education and/or skilled job training. There’s nothing new about that fact.
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