‘Real disconnect’ between cost of living and workers’ paychecks | Meet the Press Reports

[Music] Kanika Williams is a single mom of four boys living in Cleveland Ohio she has three part-time jobs cleaning homes delivering food with doordash and sorting mail for UPS she's active at her kids schools Cooks them dinner every night and stays present in their lives being around my kids that's like the number one so my kids motivate me I want us to have stuff I want us to do stuff Kanika puts her life together like sections of a quilt caring for her sons making money spending time with friends each piece is sewn together intentionally when I have a roof over my head I know when my small necessary bills are paid necessary meaning lights water gas Insurance rent I'm not talking about Netflix or any of those wanted things once I have those things taken care of I have freedom Kanika has a medical technician degree and the rise of gig work has given people like Kanika some level of autonomy but she reminisces about how things used to be for previous generations her mother Brenda just retired from her decades-long job as a janitor at an elementary school I went to that school when I was in first grade and that's where she's retiring from so those 30-year jobs those 40-year jobs are gone for US unless we start right now between our gig work at twenty dollars an hour and her UPS job at 16.50 an hour both above Ohio minimum wage she says she brings home roughly fifteen hundred dollars a month what is your definition of a living wage um being able to afford your bill your your monthly bills being able to put a portion back for savings and I think for me in my household if I was to make 3 500 a month what would that extra money what would that get you um that'll get all bills paid a little bit in the bank and maybe that oil change I may need it you know Union trouble the debate over how much workers should get paid in America has a contentious history it took Decades of strikes debates and a Great Depression for Congress to pass a law in 1938 establishing a federal minimum wage the federal minimum wage was last raised to 7.25 an hour in 2009 and wage growth has not kept pace with labor productivity so workers are more efficient but they have less to show for it Studies have found since 1980 most American workers have seen modest income growth but income for the top one percent has grown much faster everybody who works for a living deserves to be paid a wage that honors the value of the work that they're doing and meets the cost of living Michael Shields is a researcher for policy matters Ohio a liberal non-profit Economic Policy Institute for the last several decades there's been a real disconnect between how much wealth working people are producing and what's being reflected in their pay I think it comes under power larger share of all of the wealth that's produced in our economy is being Consolidated by the the very wealthy and by corporations as well working people are being less successful than they have in the past in bargaining for their share of the wealth that they made possible foreign New York we were just friends at first I actually um told my friend I was working with that the guy who trained me was really cute but too short for me and then we made plans to hang out on a Saturday and everyone everyone we were working was just like is it a day is it a date I think we got home at like one two in the morning that's a good date so you got over the hype thing when Taylor and Maggie Mendes started a new life in Florida things were bumpy Maggie working overnights at Duncan making 11 an hour which at the time was a dollar above the state's minimum wage Taylor was working a factory job and both doordashed on the side we went through some hard times but it just it builds character and it made us made us a lot stronger than um than we were before then Taylor got a job a teller at TD Bank in Melbourne Florida a group called Family Promise helped them with emergency shelter and meals and taught them how to budget Taylor's new boss helped and find housing once I got into banking I knew that it was that the sky skies were the limit from there but between his job Maggie's overnight shift and taking care of their two little ones they never saw each other then their daughter got into a brand new school but there's no bus so Maggie quit her job to watch the kids and drive their daughter to and from school every day have a good day sweetheart you should always try to appreciate what you have you know the prices of everything of cars of food of housing has gone up so much and income has not gone up a drop I'm making a decent wage for what I make and there's a lot of people making a lot less than I do and I have no idea how they're making it staggering new inflation numbers out today while high inflation has been making headlines since 2021 it certainly is not the first time in our country's history Public Enemy Number One inflation in 1974. inflation has risen steadily since 2005 reaching a 40-year high in 2022 the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics says at the same time real wages adjusted for inflation have only risen slightly that's led to a growing call to raise the minimum wage from 725 to 15 an hour Congress has debated the issue with proponents arguing it will lift people out of poverty no one should work as millions are doing today 40 hours a week at a job and still live below the poverty line and critics saying it will cost jobs if there is too much of an increase too rapidly they will be forced to shrink their workforces 30 States and four territories have already increased the minimum wage above federal law New York is one of those States and lawmakers have gone a step further tying future increases to inflation [Music] Howard Potter owns a p Master images a design and printing company in Utica New York he didn't have an easy upbringing raised by a single mom he bounced from home to home until he became a ward of the state as a person that lived in poverty at certain points knows what it's like to go to food pantries grow up in group homes I didn't have someone hold my hand to tell me how to make something of myself after college he says he was making good money at a factory but he had a side hustle and a dream so when he was 25 he cashed in his 401k and with hard work and grit built his printing company from the ground up with his wife it's in America we kind of lose focus on what hard work really is we think 40 hours a week is all that we should have to contribute and then when you look back at the early 1900s and even even after that most people were working 60 70 80 hours a week to be broke Howard likes to say his employees are family he ends he ends four day work week and pays them a dollar above the current State minimum wage of 1420 an hour but when the state raised the minimum wage he spoke up against it you're kind of leaving small business owners no choice when they when the state makes those mandates because they have to take on cost so they have to innovate and stay ahead otherwise the only option is to keep increasing pricing and hope that their customers keep coming through the door why does the increase in pay for employees automatically mean the product has to be more expensive it doesn't always necessarily guarantee that but in most cases if they have a high turnover or things of that nature you got to pay to promote the job get the next person in all those costs increase why is it that when a government forces a wage increase that contributes to inflation but when other businesses are doing it forcing you to drive up your wages that's not contributing to inflation well when you it's a very good question because one when you're doing it as a business you're doing it in a timeline that you can afford to do it so it's controlled costs when the government does it it's forced it's not controlled Kanika pieces together different sources of income to keep food on the table I'm functioning on beans you know I ain't got no rice just you know but how we make it work eels put back what you take out got to put it back once we get out there we make it happen I find we find a way Taylor Works 30 to 40 hours a week at the bank at 20 50 an hour this works out to about 2500 a month Kanika Taylor and Maggie all get some form of government help like food stamps Medicaid and rental assistance the fact that neither family can make ends meet without help begs the question what constitutes a living wage MIT has a living wage calculator which looks at the cost of eight basic needs in each County in the U.S according to that Taylor would need to make 37.97 an hour to support his family nearly twice his current wage I mean it's surprising but sadly is not surprising living in Cuyahoga County Kanika who makes less than twenty dollars an hour would need to make forty dollars and 44 cents an hour or roughly eighty four thousand dollars a year she says she's afraid to lose her benefits if she makes too much money do you find though that the issue is if you make a certain amount you won't be able to qualify for those anymore but that extra amount doesn't replace the help you're getting it is exactly like that they're going to take probably Medicaid or food stamps so now when you take my food stamps what I'm trying to build is is gone you're not allowing me to do what the program is meant for and the program is meant for people getting back to stabilization despite their constant Financial struggles Kanika Taylor and Maggie are doing what families do all the time making the most of what they have Kanika isn't immune from worry but she doesn't let it rule her life to just because you're living on minimum wage doesn't mean you have to act like you poor or you have to be all down and depressed all the time find the light in the dark and just keep moving forward because you can't stop thanks for watching our YouTube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app

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Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023