Wages Aren't Keeping Up With Cost of Living In Florida

A report released by the Alliance for a Just Society finds that current wages do not keep up with the cost of living.

The National Job Gap: 7 Job-Seekers for Every Job that Pays Above the Low-Wage Threshold: For every projected job opening above a low-wage threshold of $15 an hour, there were 7 job-seekers in 2012.

Nearly 18 Million Job-Seekers Out of Luck: With 20.8 million job-seekers and 2.9 million projected job openings that pay better than $15 an hour in 2012, there were 17.9 million more job-seekers than jobs that pay above the low-wage threshold.

An Increasing Share of Low-Wage Jobs since End of Great Recession: In terms of actual employment rather than projected openings, the share of U.S. jobs that pay below the $15 an hour low-wage threshold increased from 36.55% in 2009 to 39.45% in 2012. There were 51.4 million low-wage jobs in 2012.

“Jobless Recovery” Masks Loss of Higher-Wage Jobs, Replacement with Low-Wage Jobs: The number of jobs in occupational categories with median wages above $15 an hour dropped by 4 million from 2009 to 2012, masked by an increase of 3.6 million jobs with median wages below $15 an hour.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren pointed out that the minimum wage hasn't kept up with productivity. If the minimum wage did keep up with productivity the minimum wage would be $22.00 hr.