Lying About Minimum Wage Workers

James Peron
The Radical Center
Published in
6 min readJan 30, 2021

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On the left, the far Left in fact, is a meme being pushed by a rather ideologically left-wing propaganda mill—one with a history of playing fast and loose with numbers.

Now first, please note what is missing. Often what is not there is more important than what is. In this case they list NO source whatsoever for their numbers, not even a small link appears in their meme other than to send people to their site. I will use official sources, the only official sources, and I will link to them.

Let’s start with their myth that workers are not young people where they claim 89% are not teens and the average age is 36. The Bureau of Labor Statistics starts off their discussion of the typical minimum wage worker and they say the very opposite of what EPI claims.

Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about two-fifths of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 6 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 1 percent of workers age 25 and older.

The BLS found only 1.9% of all hourly workers 2019 earn at or below minimum wages, down from 2.1% in 2018, so it’s relatively rare. Of those 16–24 years old it’s 5.0%, so even 95% of all youth workers earn more than minimum. For those over the age of 25 it’s only 1.4%. A BLS report from 2017 noted, “About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage were employed in this industry, almost entirely in restaurants and other food services. For many of these workers, tips may supplement the hourly wages received.”

So the only center of minimum wage workers is restaurants and food service. What is excluded from the calculations is all income from tips. The BLS says, “The estimates of workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage are based solely on the hourly wage they report, which does not include overtime pay, tips, or commissions.”

One problem with calculating tips is that many of them are paid “under the table” and never accounted for. They are tax-free earnings for the minimum wage worker on top of their hourly wage. The IRS reports that 40% of all tips are not reported as income. Tips vary by region:

“Waiters and waitresses in Miami, Boston, and San Francisco reported the highest median tips per hour at around $13. The lowest median tips per hour for waiters and waitresses — around $7 — were in Minneapolis, Detroit, and Seattle. This is consistent with the BLS’ finding that tips are generally higher in metropolitan areas and regions with resorts.” It was also found that in food service female servers are tipped at higher rates than male servers.

The Washington Post reported, that the typical waiter was paid $9 per hour, “But those numbers don’t tell the whole story — because waiters are paid tips, and kitchen workers are not. And tips completely skew the comparison.” PBS talked with a restaurant owner in Seattle who is rather favorable to the higher minimums and left-of-center himself, but he admitted, “On average, a waiter, busser, bar tender and host all make about the same. It’s somewhere around $10. But a waiter makes their $10 and then they make their tips, which is often $30 or $40 an hour throughout the evening.”

A survey of 529 restaurants found median hourly wages, when tips are included, averaged $19 per hour for entry-level servers and while the more experienced “made $25 per hour.”

A University of Washington study looked at the impact of a $15 minimum wage on the lower paid employees—mostly wait staff—and what they found was interesting. According to Vox the study “found that the policy ‘reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6–7 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by 3 percent … consequently, total payroll for such jobs decreased.’”

Another result for the wait staff has been restaurants in the city abolished tipping, and patrons reduced their tips as their food costs went up. Some raised the price of food, raised the minimum they paid and urged customers to not leave tips any more. For many staff that meant a higher minimum but a lower wage overall.

It should also be noted that the states with the highest percentage of minimum wage workers are also the states with the lowest cost of living. It costs a hell of a lot more to live in San Francisco, New York, and Boston than it does to live in McComb, Mississippi. The BLS notes: “The states with the highest percentages of hourly paid workers earning at or below the minimum wage were in the South: South Carolina (about 5 percent), Louisiana (about 5 percent), and Mississippi (4 percent). The states with the lowest percentages of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage were in the West or Midwest: California, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, and Washington (all were less than 1 percent). It should be noted that more than half of states have minimum wages that exceed the federal minimum.”

The Balance reports that in Mississippi the “average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $612, which is over $315 less than the national average.” The $15 minimum proposed by Biden, at the behest of the wing of his party less knowledgeable means workers in Southern states will actually get the highest wage increases compared to their cost of living. In terms of cost of living a $15 minimum in California is worth $13.111 compared to the country as a whole, but in Mississippi it is the equivalent of $17.36; in Virginia it’s worth 14.66 but in West Virginia it’s $17,12.

A national minimum ignores the reality that costs vary dramatically by state; it increases income for the workers in states with the lowest costs of living but not workers in states with the highest costs. This disproportionately helps those who need the least money to live and does nothing for those who need the most.

EPI also claimed 57% of minimum wage workers were full time employees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics would differ with them and they do the actual data collection, not EPI. According to BLS, “About 5 percent of part-time workers (people who usually work fewer than 35 hours per week) were paid the federal minimum wage or less, compared with about 1 percent of full-time workers.” If you do the math you’ll find this means just over 84% of minimum wage workers are part-time employees, almost double what EPI implies it is. Of the 1.9% of all workers earning minimum wages only 17% of them, not 57%, are full-time workers. I believe that means of all workers in the United States just .000323% of them are full-time workers earning minimum wages.

It’s impossible to say much more about the 57% figure EPI makes so prominent as their meme doesn’t indicate where they get these numbers or why their numbers are so vastly different from the official numbers collected by the BLS for years.

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James Peron
The Radical Center

James Peron is the president of the Moorfield Storey Institute, was the founding editor of Esteem a LGBT publication in South Africa under apartheid.