It’s that time again, when low-wage workers in many states can count on a small New Year’s Day pay increase to keep up with inflation, or even a significant increase due to a change in the state minimum wage.
Iowa, you can sit this one out. Your state legislative leadership and your governor have felt no need to make sure the lowest-paid workers in our state can make ends meet.
David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute has a good blog on what will be happening Jan. 1 around the country. His summary shows the low road runs through Iowa — which is interesting because throughout 2019, the presidential campaign will be running through Iowa as well.
Minimum-wage workers in two neighboring states get inflation adjustments next week, from $9.65 to $9.86 in Minnesota and from $8.85 to $9.10 in South Dakota. In Missouri, a ballot measure is scheduled to raise the wage from $7.85 to $8.60.
Iowa sits at $7.25, along with its low-road neighbor to the northeast, Wisconsin. While Nebraska and Illinois have no increase scheduled Jan. 1, both are above the national minimum wage, unlike Iowa, Wisconsin and Kansas.
When the candidates drop by Iowa looking for 2020 votes, they might not see a lot of the people affected by this issue. But that’s only because when Iowans are working hard at $7.25 or slightly above to put food on the table (as we have shown elsewhere, 84 percent of those who would gain from an increase in the minimum (to $12) are over the age of 20, and about a quarter have children) there’s not a lot of time to attend campaign events — or, for that matter, the Iowa caucuses.
While the candidates drop by Iowa looking for 2020 votes, they might not see a lot of the people affected by this issue. Because when people are working two jobs at $7.25 or slightly above there’s not a lot of time to attend campaign events — or, for that matter, the Iowa caucuses.
Will anyone be speaking up for them?
Iowa has not raised its minimum wage since lawmakers in 2007 passed a two-step bump that raised Iowa to $7.25 on Jan. 1, 2008. Iowa has been stuck there ever since.
Iowa legislators refused in 2007 to index the rate to inflation. Had they done so, minimum-wage workers in Iowa would already be making $8.49 and presumably looking at a new increase Jan. 1. An $8.50 or higher wage would still be way too low to make ends meet working full time, as Peter Fisher and Natalie Veldhouse show in our Cost of Living in Iowa report — but better than the status quo and at least in the ballpark regionally.
Two weeks into the new year, the Legislature will be back in session and have new opportunities to address the disparity between wages and the cost of living, and the disparity between Iowa and its neighbors who have higher standards. Absent action in Washington for a higher national minimum wage, the issue is in Iowa lawmakers’ court.
