This moderate increase recognises that many businesses are struggling, and helps protect jobs at a time of rising unemployment. The inflation-busting rise some unions had called for would have hit firms hard and put many lower paid workers on the dole. Over the past decade, the minimum wage has risen faster than average earnings and inflation, and a sensible, cautious approach now will help ensure this landmark piece of legislation continues to improve the lives of low paid workers for many years to come.
We pressed for a freeze to the minimum wage because of the severity of the downturn and the daily loss of jobs. We are pleased that the increase is only a modest one, and it shows that the Low Pay Commission and the government have largely understood the seriousness of the situation. However, a freeze in the NMW [national minimum wage] would have been more help to business.
Low paid workers will be relieved to see a further increase in the minimum wage this year. The Low Pay Commission was right to withstand pressure from business to freeze the minimum wage. It would not have been fair to force the low paid to suffer a freeze in wages, while the city bankers still get their bonuses.
But the increase this year is a very slender one. The LPC must be more generous when the economy recovers next year. In addition to the remit to monitor the effect of the national minimum wage on different groups of workers, the LPC was asked to review the current exemptions for apprentices and advise whether these were still appropriate. The LPC recommended the introduction of a minimum wage rate for apprentices and suggested that the government should ask it to consider the detailed arrangements in its report in Supreme Court decisions.
Subsequent amendments to the FLSA have extended the law's coverage to additional employees and raised the level of the minimum wage.
In , the minimum wage was raised from 40 cents an hour to 75 cents an hour for all workers and minimum wage coverage was expanded to include workers in the air transport industry.
The amendments also eliminated industry committees except in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. A specific section was added granting the Wage and Hour Administrator in the U.
Department of Labor authorization to control the incidence of exploitative industrial homework. Retail and service establishments were allowed to employ fulltime students at wages of no more than 15 percent below the minimum with proper certification from the Department of Labor. The concept of enterprise coverage was introduced by the amendments.
Those amendments extended coverage in the retail trade industry from an established , workers to 2. The amendments also extended coverage to public schools, nursing homes, laundries, and the entire construction industry. Farms were subject to coverage for the first time if their employment reached or more man days of labor in the previous year's peak quarter. As such, the actual number of workers with earnings at or below the prevailing Federal minimum is undoubtedly understated.
Research has shown that a relatively small number and share of salaried workers and others not paid by the hour have earnings that, when translated into hourly rates, are at or below the minimum wage. However, BLS does not routinely estimate hourly earnings for non-hourly workers because of data concerns that arise in producing these estimates. Menu Search button Search:. Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: In , 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 half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, nearly 19 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over.
See table 1 and table 7. About 6 percent of women paid hourly rates had wages at or below the prevailing Federal minimum, compared with about 4 percent of men. See table 1. The percentage of workers earning the minimum wage did not vary much across the major race and ethnicity groups.
About 5 percent of white, black, and Hispanic hourly-paid workers earned the Federal minimum wage or less. Among Asian hourly-paid workers, about 4 percent earned the minimum wage or less.
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