"They work full time in the richest nation on earth, yet they can’t make ends meet. They can’t make ends meet because their wages are too low. They are health care aides who can’t afford health insurance. They work in the food industry, but depend on food banks to help feed their children. They are child care teachers who don’t make enough to save for their own children’s education. . . . They care for the elderly, but they have no pensions."—from Raise the Floor
A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it. But millions of people make up the working poor in the U.S. Rooted in powerful new research and personal narratives, Raise the Floor makes the case for a livable minimum wage and shows how good wages are good business.
Raise the Floor illustrates how the current annual minimum wage income of $10,712 a year just doesn’t add up. For example, to make ends meet, two parents with two children would have work more than three full-time minimum wage jobs—66 hours a week—leaving little time for sleep, family outings, religious services, or participating in community activities with their kids.
In a January 2002 poll of likely voters, Americans overwhelmingly identified raising the minimum wage as key to stimulating the economy. By a resounding 77 percent, these voters favored increasing the minimum wage to $8 an hour—the amount a single, full-time worker needs to meet minimum needs.
Raise the Floor is written in a lively, readable style and includes boxed quotes from folks in all walks of life who recognize the need for practical solutions to ending poverty. Documented with 60 tables and charts.

Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All Of Us

Business & Money

Sklar, Holly

Mykyta, Laryssa

Wefald, Susan

Economics

South End Press

Most Americans believe a job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it. "Raise The Floor," shows us how we can translate that belief into reality. An annual minimum wage income of $10,712 a year just doesn't add up. The book presents national minimum needs budgets for individuals and families to meet basic needs such as food, housing and health care. "Raise The Floor" shows minimum wage critics are wrong, demonstrates how good wages are good business, and recommends raising the minimum wage to $8. That's what a single worker needs to meet their minimum needs working full time. That's what it takes just to match the minimum wage of 1968, adjusting for inflation. To assure that all working families can meet basic needs, the book explains how we can supplement a higher minimum wage with improved child care, health care, housing and Earned Income Tax Credit policies, and other practical solutions.

Raise The Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us

MS Foundation for Women

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