One Fair Wage noted that “tipped workers can still legally be paid as little as $2.13 an hour, a system advocates describe as a direct legacy of slavery.”
Over a third of US states are set to raise their minimum hourly wage in 2026, but worker advocates including Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday decried a federal minimum wage that’s remained at $7.25 since 2009—and just $2.13 an hour for tipped workers for over three decades.
Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media on the eve of the hikes: “Congratulations to the 19 states raising the minimum wage in 2026. But let’s be clear: A $7.25 federal minimum wage is a national disgrace. No one who works full time should live in poverty. We must keep fighting to guarantee all workers a living wage—not starvation wages.”
Yannet Lathrop, NELP’s senior researcher and policy analyst, said earlier this month that “the upcoming minimum wage increases are incremental and won’t magically turn severely underpaid jobs into living-wage jobs, but they do offer a bit of relief at a time when every dollar matters for people.”
There are tons of jobs that pay minimum wage where I live.
Small town grocery, for example. They know people need a job, and they don’t have competition.
I live in a town of 1000 people. The town where my grocery store is has less than 4000 people. Believe me I get small towns. I live a as deep in Pennsylvania coal county as is possible. District 12 in the hunger games was LITERALLY based on where I live.
The example of the grocery store worker I gave was in my small town Weis. I was trying to recruit the kid to work at the place where I work when he told me what he made and that he was a junior in high school. HE gets paid 30% over minimum.
I think it’s important to divide not just wage quality, but employment demographic. I think $10/hr is an absolutely acceptable wage for a kid in high school. That said, a shelf stocker is not the correct employment choice for a single parent. $10/hr IS a living wage for a 16 year old. I’ve had to make a lot of hard choices as a life long blue collar worker but I’ve always understood that there are SOME jobs that are not intended for “me”.
I think this is where the problem starts. We talk about jobs like every position should be able so support a family. Different jobs are appropriate for different stages of life. A “living wage” means vastly different things in different places.
So it seems that the issue is that you, fundamentally, either:
A) do not believe that everybody should be compensated equal pay for equal work
Or
B) do not believe that everybody who works deserves to be able to support themselves on their income.
Furthermore, it appears to me that you are assuming a great deal about 16-year-olds. I teach high school, and most of my students are working to support their family every minute they aren’t actively in school, sleeping, or ferrying themselves on public transit.
Finally, the fact that you seem to think that some jobs are simply lesser than others belies the fact that you value certain workers less. I genuinely wish that you could experience every person in one of these jobs walking out for two days, so you could witness society crumble. Do you think that the custodian should make less than the financier? Because I’ll tell you which one of those jobs requires more actual labour, and, spoiler: it’s not the dude throwing everyone else’s wellbeing on the pyre of their own self aggrandisement.