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Maybe where you live, but not everywhere. I don't live in a cheap area and I work a retail job that starts at $15.25 an hour. (I make a bit more since I've been there a year). There are retail and other such jobs in this area that pay less to start. I think WalMart starts at around $14 in this area.
It's still a decent wage. My first job was a fast food joint in 2002, it paid 5.75/hr. I started working at WalMart in 2004, pay was 7.15 for a cashier. So you can make at least double that now.
Not all costs have doubled in 20 years, so arguably a service worker is in better shape now.
Minimum wage earners may be better off, but the reality is there are fewer off them. Kid just got her first job working part time at the mall at a clothing store. Pay with 0 experience is $19/hour. Part of that though is cultural for this area. It's frowned on for teens to work here. However, she recognizes that there are some skills she'll need to develop from work that she'll not want to try and catch up on in her first real job. She had a school friend that was working there whose parents were friends with the manager. That friend got $19.50/hour, but didn't drive. A collusion was born.
That's the difference. Part of the minimum wage experience (I started there as well) is that you need a place that's willing to train a non-worker into a worker. Like many others here, I didn't stay at minimum wage once I'd completed that, and having work experience allowed me to move into other better jobs.
Similarly, after a month or so, one of the higher end stores came in an blatantly tried to recruit her (using Vietnamese as to not alert the manager) to work at their store in the same mall. The pay would be about $2.50/hour more, but they'd noted her presentation at the other store and wanted her to join theirs. Never would have happened from the application and the store isn't even advertising. Now, kid doesn't feel ready for that jump up yet and thus declined, but that's how it's done. What's a good job for her now, will be a minimum wage awful later.
Those opportunities to get started are going to get harder for people to come by though. Everyone knows malls are having a tough time. The gold standard of McJobs.....check it out. More locations, fewer employees....a lot fewer.
These jobs will pay more on their own. Restaurants here now close earlier, many with breaks in service between the noon and dinner rushes....or they choose one or the other to serve and that's it. Robotics are starting to dominate. Many restaurants now have you order food via phone app, may deliver food to the table via robot, check out via app....Wendy's is talking about replacing drive through with AI.
I came up via grocery store. When I did it, we'd separately sack all your groceries and we'd load them into your car for you in a type of drive through concoction. Check out speed was fast. Now, I've trained myself finally to not pop in for a couple items because the lines and checkout times are so slow. While I don't agree, I can see why shoplifiting is up.
At the rate we're going, minimum wage jobs will be eliminated and we'll do all of our consumption via vending machines and Amazon.
You assume all businesses are using supply and demand to determine wages you don’t know that though. Seems like you just heard the words supply and demand and now use it for all your economic views without really know what it is.
It’s not at all an assumption, it’s reality, and we DO know it. Wages are determined based on the interplay between the supply of labor and the demand for labor.
But hey, if you don’t believe in supply and demand, why don’t you tell us how wages are determined.
I'm not sure how anyone could be doing better in just the past few years unless they got a huge raise, a huge inheritance, married someone rich, sold a home (and did not buy another home), won the lottery or got very lucky a stock.
Other than that with the way the cost of everything keeps going up it doesn't make much sense how someone would be doing better. If you have kids, forget it.
I'm not sure how anyone could be doing better in just the past few years unless they got a huge raise, a huge inheritance, married someone rich, sold a home (and did not buy another home), won the lottery or got very lucky a stock.
Other than that with the way the cost of everything keeps going up it doesn't make much sense how someone would be doing better. If you have kids, forget it.
Since it seems that most traditionally minimum wage jobs like fast food and retail have hourly wages around the $15 an hour mark, I'm curious if it had improved those workers' qualities of life. Or is it still just as bad with inflation? Are they stiffed on hours? It seems like very few people make minimum wage these days. I'm not included the criminally underpaid tipped workers in this question.
Everybody's lives are getting worse everyday, except for the top 1% who are sucking everything up. $15 an hour is a joke. It's nothing and everybody except for the most desperate members of society are rejecting it.
Everybody's lives are getting worse everyday, except for the top 1% who are sucking everything up. $15 an hour is a joke. It's nothing and everybody except for the most desperate members of society are rejecting it.
I agree the 1% is sucking it all up...but if you're making $15 an hour you have an opportunity to do better.
I think what's sad is that not everyone is an over achiever, some folks are simpler people who just want a
normal life...but in this country it seems like you have to work hard just to have a normal life. I can almost see why some just resort to getting on welfare or getting section 8 housing. The thing that is annoying about that is the funds for that is taken out of working people's paychecks
Self checkouts and the like have been in development for over 25 years. When I worked at Walmart almost 20 years ago, was when they first invested in them. Iirc it was 2006-7ish they really invested in that infrastructure. Minimum wage was 5.15 back then. The kiosks probably facilitate more orders than a human cashier.
For the record self checkouts in stores are going away. They are a complete failure. There is a YouTube channel now devoted just to showing shoplifters (shoppers who didn't scan all their items) being arrested at one ShopRite supermarket in New Jersey. The cops there are getting fed up with responding to the store all day long to arrest shoplifters. The cops are there so much they literally know all of the employees by name. The whole system is a revolving door, because the courts can't even handle the caseload of all those shoplifters. The prosecutors automatically plea bargain the shoplifting charges down to disturbing the peace, just to clear them out. So people just pay a small fine for stealing hundreds of dollars of groceries.
This is happening all over the country. Police Departments are starting to refuse to respond to self-checkout problems at stores. Once that happens it will be a free for all at the self-checkouts. Self-checkout is no longer cost effective. Which means they will have to hire more cashiers, and they will have to pay them more.
I agree the 1% is sucking it all up...but if you're making $15 an hour you have an opportunity to better.
I think what's sad is that not everyone is an over achiever, some folks are simpler people who just want a
normal life...but in this country it seems like you have to work hard just to have a normal life. I can almost see why some just resort to getting on welfare or getting section 8 housing. The thing that is annoying about that is the funds for that is taken out of working people's paychecks
My income is less now on disability, then it was when I was working. But I'm still doing better now. I have a nice apartment, instead of just a single room, and I don't have to worry about not being able to pay my rent, or having enough money to buy food, because my hours got cut.
Unfortunately not everybody has the same option I have. But they will find outer ways, probably crime. Because crime pays better than minimum wage. The whole system is collapsing. I'm not sure if the minimum wage could even be raised enough at this point.
I agree the 1% is sucking it all up...but if you're making $15 an hour you have an opportunity to do better.
I think what's sad is that not everyone is an over achiever, some folks are simpler people who just want a
normal life...but in this country it seems like you have to work hard just to have a normal life. I can almost see why some just resort to getting on welfare or getting section 8 housing.
The thing that is annoying about that is the funds for that is taken out of working people's paychecks
Exactly!! It wouldn't be too bad, if we working taxpayers could at least use these illegals as "deductible dependents" on our tax returns.....
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