INCREASING WOMEN'S INCOME
Minimum Wage

Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. The minimum wage does not increase automatically and it is not adjusted for inflation. In 2007, the federal minimum wage was increased for the first time in 10 years. The new federal minimum wage is $15,080 a year for a worker who works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which was enacted in 1938, sets a wage floor or a level that wages are not allowed to fall below. To raise the federal minimum wage, Congress must pass a bill and the President must sign it to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Many states also have minimum wage laws and currently thirteen states and the District of Columbia pay more than the federal minimum wage. Twenty-eight states have laws that set the minimum wage at the federal level. Four states have lower minimum wage rates than the federal limit and five states (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee) have no laws governing minimum wage. However, in cases where the state and federal minimum wage differ, the employee is entitled to the higher of the two minimum wages.

Advocates for raising the minimum wage argue that raising the minimum wage helps women, girls and their families better afford basic necessities including food, medicine, and clothing for their families or even expand housing, education, and child care options. Advocates also believe that no one who works for a living should be living in poverty, yet a working mother or father who earns the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour will still not make enough to move a family of three out of poverty.

Opponents of raising the minimum wage argue businesses should set the level of wages not the government. Opponents also believe that increasing the minimum wage helps mostly teenagers, not adults or families, and results in businesses reducing hiring because of the higher costs in employee wages.

YWCA Position
Increasing Women’s Incomes includes policies that contribute to the economic empowerment of women. This includes but is not limited to policies that address the minimum wage, pay equity, social security, and budget and tax policy.

The YWCA supports initiatives to increase the income of women, including policies that raise the minimum wage, protect overtime, strengthen equal pay, maintain the earned income tax credit, oppose the privatization of Social Security, and expand non-traditional training for women from all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds.