Living on Minimum Wage

The US state of Wyoming has some
of the lowest wages in the country.

For starters, what many call the dirt
low US minimum wage of $7.25

an hour that hasn't been
raised in over a decade.

A quarter of the workforce here makes
minimum wage or a few dollars more

working essential jobs that are
considered the backbone of the economy,

but they're paid nothing close to
what is considered a livable wage here.

MIT's recent cost
of living estimate

says a single mother with children
here should be making $27.53 an hour.

That's right.
$27.53 an hour.

And Wyoming's considered very
affordable compared to other states.

But none of Wyoming's low wage workers
make anything close to 27.53 an hour.

$12 an
hour? - Yeah.

-$11 an hour here?
What do you make? - 10.35.

- 10.35 an hour? - Yes.
- About 9. - $9 an hour?

Some workers here, believe it or not, only earn
Wyoming's state minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.

Some food
servers, even less.

- 2.50 an hour? - You make
2.50 an hour? - Yep. - $2.50 an hour,

relying, she says,
mainly on tips.

Across the United States,
nearly 100,000,000

low income workers
live in near poverty,

meaning many only earn $20,000 a
year according to the US Census Bureau,

and 30,000,000 more workers
live below the poverty line.

In Wyoming, 20% of the population
lives below the poverty line.

Economist Nick Kelsch is one guy in Wyoming
who knows how poorly people can be paid here

because he was one of them. As a teenager
and through college who worked all

kinds of minimum wage jobs, clawing his way out of
poverty, he says, to become one of the nation's

most vocal advocates today for raising the US
minimum wage, and he's very passionate about it.

- I'm passionate because I don't know.
I think you should care about other people.

- Nick's the director of the University of Wyoming's
Center For Business and Economic Analysis

here in Wyoming's capital, Cheyenne,
and says a little known fact

when it comes to the minimum
wage issue is that US labor laws

exempt many businesses from paying
even minimum wage to various employees here,

like farm workers, seasonal workers in hotels,
childcare workers such as babysitters,

and many jobs that
teenagers are hired for.

- For example, if you are a teenager,
you're under the age of 20

and you are training in
some locations like retail,

they can pay you a training wage
for the first 90 days of 4.25 an hour.

Almost half of what the
current minimum wage is.

If you are mentally
or physically disabled

and they determine that you couldn't
find gainful employment elsewhere

and that you are a burden based
on your output of productivity,

they can pay you less than minimum
wage and be justified in doing so.

- Kells says single mothers with children
to support here in Wyoming suffer the most

as low wage workers. - If you're
working the minimum wage with children,

there's no way you can afford to
live off of just one job right now.

-Yeah. I work, like, 3
jobs. - Are you kidding?

- Nick Kells says people in his community
should at least be able to make a livable wage,

says he well remembers his
minimum wage days a decade ago

when he says it took him forever to save
up enough money to buy this truck

that he still
drives today.

- Hope the cracked windshield doesn't ruin
your shot. - I love it. Sort of a metaphor again.

[p]

- Next, he shows us some of the
low income housing he once lived in.

- Then these are my old
apartments right up here.

- Any flashbacks right now? - Aside from my
neighbor occasionally stealing my mail, no.

I've noticed there are a lot more trailer parks
in Cheyenne and really across Wyoming.

You'll see them out in rural areas.
A lot of them, they get rented out

by people who work in, like, the oil or
mining fields, just kinda temp workers.

You can, it depends on if it's families or not. So
it might be 2 people living in it it might be 12.

Tons of trailer parks because
houses are so expensive out here.

The average house
is $300,000. Right?

So you can't afford a house out here.
You just wouldn't. I mean,

minimum wage if you
{if it was 7.25 an hour,

you need to find rent
for $300 a month.

- No mortgage payment that
low? - Yeah. There's no way.

- A resident here making Wyoming's
state minimum wage of $5.15

an hour is living well
below the poverty line

making less than $10,000,
10 grand a year.

- Could you imagine trying to live off of
5.15 an hour? I mean, we're talking

10 grand a year or less,
and then they take out taxes.

So really, you're talking about maybe 8
grand a year. - In this trailer south of town

lives 72 year old grandmother Peggy King who
says she struggles to make ends meet each month

even though she's working
a union job as a cashier

at this fuel station for one of the
nation's powerhouse food stores.

- You have a good day. - I make union
wages, and, they're above minimum.

How much do I make?
$15.88 an hour.

Still doesn't
make it.

- And Peggy's also supporting
other family members, she says.

Grandkids and
great grandkids.

Peggy says she
dreamed of retiring at 65.

That was 7 years ago. In the
meantime, she reads a lot, memoirs,

and loves Stephen King. - We
have, I think, just about every book

that Stephen King has
written. - Really? - Yeah.

- Says she just keeps on working
because she simply cannot afford to retire.

- I'm on social security and
I have to work a second job.

[p]

Because I just {I
just can't make it.

- What are some of your
expenses, for example?

- A car, putting gas
in the car, groceries.

Groceries are horrible. I'm
broke at the end of the month.

If you didn't have social security... - If I
didn't have {I'd probably be out on the street.

[p]

- We observed 1 Wyoming man asking
motorists for money saying it's difficult to find a

decent paying job. Says he
usually works in construction.

- In the labor and, you know, the
thing about construction and, you

you know, things like that.
- Can I see your face? - Yes.

- What's your name?
- Gentry. - Gentry. - Yeah.

But I'm out here right now because
I have loads of mouths to feed.

It's hard to
find work.

I was homeless for quite a while,
so my resume didn't look that good.

And, my wife's in a wheelchair
because she was in a motorcycle accident,

and it's hard to have an 8 hour
job and still take care of her,

you know, because she's got a
{I gotta take her to the restroom.

I can only be out here for
maybe an hour or 2 at most,

and I gotta get back to
take care of her, you know.

- I mean, is it worth getting a minimum wage
job or does it even pay any bills or what?

- It's worth it. Yeah. It's worth it.
It's better than nothing. Is it not?

But is minimum wage
enough? You know?

Is it enough? Now
that's the question.

That's not my
job to figure out.

- Figuring out how to raise the minimum
wage in the United States to $15 an hour

has been the subject of a fierce
and emotional debate across the US.

Some states like California have
passed laws to raise their minimum wage

to $15 an hour within
the next couple years.

Other places like New York City have
already raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

[p]

However, a majority of US legislators have
been reluctant to raise the federal minimum wage

to $15 an hour because they say they're
worried it will cause large corporate companies

as well as smaller businesses to
lay off staff and stop hiring employees.

Their concern's based on a recent report of the
US Congressional Budget Office determining that

1,300,000 people would lose their jobs if the
minimum wage is increased to $15 an hour.

[p]

Many owners of small businesses that are
considered the heart and soul of many towns

across the US are already hurting
during the COVID pandemic.

Small businesses that can barely pay
employees the current minimum wage

that are themselves no
longer making a profit.

Some owners of these businesses
taking on second jobs themselves

outside their own small
shops to pay their bills.

In states like Wyoming, many businesses
say it's the cheap labor here that attracted them

to the state in the first place, and
many say they'll go out of business

if they're forced to pay
employees $15 an hour.

A regional executive of a convenience
store chain we spoke with agrees.

- Because there's been a lot
of talk about the minimum wage

and, like, whether it should be raised
or not, and there are businesses that are saying

they're against it. - A lot of businesses
would be out of business if they had

to go to 15 an hour for a minimum
wage. - And for decades, many of

Wyoming's elected state leaders
have been protecting businesses

from increasing
the minimum wage.

However, newly elected Wyoming
lawmaker Carly Provenza,

who says she grew up in a
family that struggled financially,

says she's determined to raise
the minimum wage in Wyoming.

For all of Wyoming workers, she says,
struggling as she had early on.

- i know what those feel like
and what it's like to struggle and

those are the people that
we need to work for.

- Provenza recently proposed legislation
that if passed, would raise the

minimum wage in
Wyoming to $15 an hour.

- It's not acceptable for
anybody to have to work 3 jobs,

70 hours a week, and still
not be able to pay rent.

- As for her colleagues and businesses
here claiming raising the minimum wage will lead to

a spike in unemployment, economist Nick
Kelsch uses graphs to show how when Seattle,

San Francisco, and New York City raised
their minimum wage to $15 an hour back

in 2014, unemployment,
if anything, went down.

- You don't see any major spike in
unemployment at all. In fact, unemployment

keeps going down. It keeps continuing with
its economic trend. And so after the minimum

wage is raised to $15 an hour and
phased in, the economy seemed to be doing better.

- And if you can give people an
opportunity to not work 70 hours a week

at 3 different jobs to survive, imagine
what they would be doing instead.

- It ends up paying off. It might be
uncomfortable in the short term.

You know, that transition into a higher wage
for small businesses will hurt, but

happier workers are workers
that don't turn over.

They're workers that work
harder, and businesses

will see benefits from that. And
when we talk about job loss,

it's okay if you lose jobs if someone
who's working 3 jobs now only has to work 1.

That's okay that you lost 2 jobs in
your state if that person now has

a living wage, can spend time with
their family, and can, can thrive.

And working at minimum wage
now as it is doesn't allow for that.

- The US government's own research estimates
that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour

will lift 900,000
people out of poverty

and would save US taxpayers money in funding
expensive welfare and food stamp programs

currently for the
country's poor.

Nick Kelch says politicians and business leaders
evidently forget about other expenses minimum wage

workers here have, like health care. - When
it comes to health care and the fact

that basically Americans are paying at
least twice as much if not more than any

country that has universal health care,
and if you're not insured by your employer

and you're trying to pay out of pocket, the
fact is that the number one form of bankruptcy

in the US is people going
medically bankrupt.

There's no way you can afford to
live off of just one job right now.

- How much
does this job pay?

- They're not allowed to say it. - They're not
allowed to say, says that convenience store

executive we spoke with earlier who refuses
to tell us how much she pays her employees.

Like, how much do these employees
make here? - I can't talk about that, honey.

- Is it a livable wage?
- I'm living okay.

- Well, you probably
make more.

Peggy King says she has a
message to corporate CEOs

in the US who are historically
paid hefty multimillion

dollar bonuses every year when many
of their employees are barely surviving.

You know, that bonus
could have been spread

throughout your
employees.

Yeah. That's
great. Yeah.

- And she says most state
legislators in Wyoming

simply don't care that the
minimum wage here is so low.

- They just don't care.
You're starving people.

You're putting
people in poverty.

I mean, I'm
in poverty.

In the end, it's worth remembering that even
workers who have families to support like

Peggy King, who are already
earning $15 an hour,

are still way short of earning the
$27.53 an hour living wage

for workers supporting
families at home.

So even if the US does eventually raise
the minimum wage across the country to

$15 an hour, which
could take years,

it will not qualify as a livable wage
for millions of people in this country.

People like
Peggy King.

- That's what
hurts.