California Minimum Wage Increases to Bridge the Gap of Inequality

This year, many people will find themselves with more money, because on January 1, California increased its minimum wage.

California’s minimum wage officially rose from $9 per hour to $10 per hour, and by the year 2020, the minimum wage will increase to $15 per hour.  California has now joined Washington D.C. and Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, Maryland, and Connecticut with raising their wages to ten dollars or more within the next two years.

The national minimum wage currently rests at $7.25 per hour, however on average, a single mother with two children would have to work 125 hours per week-which is more hours than there are in a five day work week-in order to make a living wage.  

Maintaining a low minimum wage, federal or statewide, would be easy, if the majority of the workers who earned the minimum were part time teenagers.  But as of 2014, almost 80 percent of those who made the federal minimum or below were adults over 25 years old. 

This will be beneficial to nearly 38 million California residents who live below the poverty line, allowing struggling families to bring themselves above the poverty line.  In Contra Costa County specifically, in order to support one working adult, $13.35 per working adult, not including the cost of children, in order to make a living wage.  

For as the minimum wage rises, the results will benefit the lower classes and begin to close the ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor. 

According to Pew Research Center Report, the top .1 percent of the American upper class is worth more than the bottom 90 percent of American’s total worth.  The median wealth of the nation’s upper-income families, as of 2013, was $639,400, almost seven times the median wealth of middle-income families, and nearly 70 times than of lower-income families.

America’s current wealth gap is the largest it has been in 30 years, and with an increased minimum wage in place, California may begin to bridge this gap and hopefully create a difference in the unequal spread of assets in our nation.