Over 41 million American workers make less than $15 an hour. And these workers are disproportionately women or PoC.
Here’s who makes less than $15 an hour while working full-time:
- Over 3.8 million Latino women, or 50% of the population
- Over 3.4 million Black women, almost 50% of the population
- Over 12 million White women, a third of the population
- Almost a million Asian women, over 25% of the population
- Over 3.5 million Latino men, over a third of the population
- Over 2 million men Black men, that’s a third of the population
- Over 10 million White men, almost 25% of the population
- Almost 0.8 million Asian men, almost 20% of the population
When we include part-time workers, the stats look even worse, with roughly a half of all women workers making less than $15/hr. Low-wage workers are clustered in the retail, food-service and home care industries.
So if you’ve spent the last two days fighting for Barack Obama’s right to make $400,000 per hour for a speech, that’s great. But you damn well better spend the other 363 days of the year fighting for the 41 million American workers who need your solidarity to raise the federal minimum to a living wage.
Bobby Scott (VA) and Keith Ellison (MN) will introduce a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 within four years. Senator Patty Murray (WA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) will present an identical bill in the Senate. The Senate bill has 22 co-sponsors, including Schumer, Durbin, Blumenthal, Booker, Brown, Cantwell, Gillibrand, Feinstein, Franken, Harris, Hirono, Kaine, Leahy, Markey, Merkley, Reed, Schatz, Van Hollen, Warren, Whitehouse and Wyden.