Ohio Minimum Wage

Ohio's Minimum Wage - Issue 2

The current Minimum Wage in Ohio matches the Federal Minimum Wage at $5.15 per hour.   A proposed increase to $6.85 will be decided by State ballot in November 2006.  Concerned members of the St. John community may want to consider the following information to make an informed decision.

According to Let Justice Roll Ohio, a faith-based partner of Ohioans for a Fair Minimum Wage, 18 states and Washington D.C. currently have minimum  wages above the federal minimum.  Neighbor state West Virginia is at $7.25, and Michigan is poised to raise wages to $6.95 this October and $7.40 by 2008.  Other information to consider:

• A single earner working full-time at $5.15 per hour earns $10,700 per year - nearly $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of three and nearly $3,000 below for a family of two.  According to the US Department of Labor, about 40% of the workers who would benefit from an increased minimum wage are the sole wage earners in their households.
• An increase in the minimum wage would disproportionately benefit women, minorities, and the nation's poor.  Most of those affected by the last minimum wage increase (72 percent) were adults aged 20 and over, and more than half of all teenagers earning the minimum wage are in households with below-average incomes.
• An increase in the minimum wage will not increase joblessness; opponents of the minimum wage often argue that it increases unemployment for entry-level workers, thereby hurting the people it is meant to help.  But history clearly shows that raising the minimum wage has not negatively impacted the economy.  In the four years after the last federal minimum wage increase passed, the economy experienced its strongest growth in over three decades.  There were ten million new service industry jobs added, including more than one and a half million retail jobs, of which nearly 600,000 were restaurant jobs.

Office of Social Development and World Peace, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Faith in Minimum Wage

 “Paying a hard-working, single mom nearly $3,000 less than the established mark of poverty is a grave injustice.”
– Rev. Eric Brown

"There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American whether he (she) is a hospital worker, laundry work, maid or day laborer." 
-- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.A job should keep you out of poverty, not in it. 
-- Rev. Paul Sherry "To live with such inequality really does something to the soul of a society."
-- Rev. Colleen Ogle
Time Magazine recently commented on the Ohio Minimum Wage, in it's article, Trying to Make A Decent Living.

For more information on the Minimum Wage check out Raise the Wage.