By Josh Resnek
The New year begins with Massachusetts becoming a mandatory $15 an hour minimum wage state. Think about this.
If you are an Everett head of household working a job in a fast food outlet, or a gas station, or in a super market, a hospital, an old age home or in any number of non-public service jobs, the $15 an hour guaranteed wage barely allows you to survive.
If you work a 40 hour week at $15 an hour, you don’t need to be a math whiz to estimate your income – $600 a week, before taxes are taken out.
The $600 gross becomes closer to $460 net. If you live in an apartment with your wife and two children at $1600 rent per month, this would leave you with about $240 for gas and electric, food, automobile, cell phone, Internet connection, heat and cable for the flat screen.
Bottom line, at the minimum wage working 40 hours a week, the most likely possibilities are poverty and constant economic worry.
There is no survival for the weary working minimum wage jobs in Massachusetts, or just about anywhere these days across the nation.
Now let’s say there are two minimum wage workers in the family, the mother and the father, working a total of 80 hours a week and taking home $920 a week.
Continue reading “The $15 minimum wage a guarantee for descent into poverty and hopelessness”