Sara Chernikoff, USA TODAY
Sat, September 16, 2023
Unions representing health care workers, fast food workers and other industries are increasingly flexing their power, as employees take to the picket lines this summer.
Across industries, workers are seeking improved benefits, better working conditions and most commonly, increased wages.
In California, nearly 1 million fast food and healthcare workers are set to get a major raise after a deal was announced earlier this week between labor unions and industries.
Under the new bill, most of California's 500,000 fast food workers will be paid at least $20 per hour next year. And a separate bill will increase health care workers' salaries to at least $25 per hour over the next 10 years.
How does minimum wage for health care and fast-food employees compare in other states?
Minimum wage varies across the US, see map
Fifteen states have laws in place that make minimum wages equivalent to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, according to the Department of Labor. Another five states have no minimum wage laws.
Strike a deal: California fast food workers to get $20 per hour if minimum wage bill passes
Health care walkout: Kaiser strike authorized by unions in 4 states; 3 more may follow
Which states have the lowest minimum wage?
The following states require businesses to pay employees a wage that’s equivalent or higher to the federal minimum wage at $7.25:
Georgia
Iowa
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
North Carolina
North Dakota
New Hampshire
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Texas
Utah
Wisconsin
Which states have the highest minimum wage?
Washington, DC has the highest minimum wage of any state of territory in US at $16.50 an hour. Washington state has the highest minimum wage of any state in the country at $15.74 per hour, followed by California at $15.50. These following states have minimum wages higher than the federal level:
Washington, DC, $16.50
Washington, $15.74
California, $15.50
Massachusetts, $15.00
New York, $14.20
New Jersey, $14.13
Connecticut, $14.00
Arizona, $13.85
Maryland, $13.80
Maine, $13.80
Colorado, $13.65
Oregon, $13.50
Vermont, $13.18
Rhode Island, $13.00
Illinois, $13.00
Missouri, $12.00
New Mexico, $12.00
Virginia, $12.00
Delaware, $11.75
Arkansas, $11.00
Florida, $11.00
Hawaii, $11.00
Alaska, $10.85
South Dakota, $10.80
Minnesota, $10.59
Nebraska, $10.50
Nevada, $10.50
Michigan, $10.10
Ohio, $10.10
Montana, $9.95
West Virginia, $8.75
Which states have no minimum wage laws?
There is no minimum wage law in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina or Tennessee, so minimum wages default to federal law at $7.25. In Georgia and Wyoming, the state minimum wage is lower than the federal minimum wage at $5.15 an hour. But, many employers are subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act and must pay the current Federal minimum wage.
Do minimum wage laws vary within a state?
Nevada has two tiers of minimum wage: Employers that provide health benefits must pay workers at least $9.50 an hour, while employers that do not provide health benefits must pay at least $10.50 an hour.
How many workers make federal minimum wage or less?
According to the Department of Labor, 78.7 million workers age 16 and older were paid at hourly rates, making up 55.6% of all wage and salary workers. Of those hourly workers, about 1 million were paid wages at or below the federal minimum wage, making up 1.3% of all hourly paid workers.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: California minimum wage now among highest in US: See where states rank
Job postings with salary ranges are fast becoming the new norm
Kerry Hannon
·Senior Columnist
Sat, September 16, 2023
It’s gotten so much easier for job seekers to find out how much a potential job may pay.
Half of US job postings in August advertised at least some employer-provided salary information, according to a new report by the job board Indeed. That marked the highest share yet recorded by the firm. Overall, the share of postings with pay transparency has nearly tripled from its February 2020 level of 18%.
The increase is largely due to a host of pay transparency laws enacted over the past few years by states and the share of postings with pay data likely will rise with New York State’s disclosure law going into effect this month.
"Now that the share of postings advertising pay is passing the halfway point, it looks like salary transparency is here to stay," Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, told Yahoo Finance.
"Given the near-tripling transparent postings in the last few years, it’s not looking very likely that we’ll return to the days of having pay in 15 to 20% of job listings, even in light of a cooling labor market."
By the end of this year, roughly one in four workers across the country will be covered by a state or local law that requires businesses to be transparent about their pay range.
New York state's pay-transparency law, which requires employers to disclose a salary range in job listings, takes effect on Sunday, while New York City's law has been in place since last year.
In California and Washington state, laws requiring employers to post salary ranges on all advertised job postings went into effect on Jan. 1. Similar pay disclosure laws are in place in Colorado, while Maryland and Rhode Island require salary information to be provided when an applicant requests it.
In preparation for the new law, many employers in New York state had already jumped on board. More than six in 10 (61%) of job postings in New York State featured some level of pay transparency in August, almost double from a year prior (31%), according to the Indeed data.
More than eight in 10 (81%) of listings in Colorado featured salary data, making it the most transparent state. Its law took effect in 2021 and was the first in the country to require employers to reveal the salary nitty gritty.
Other states with a lofty share of salary data listed on their job postings also have laws on the books, including California, where 70% of listings include pay details, and Washington state with 75%.
While salary transparency rates are rising overall, that growth is not occurring evenly across state lines and geographic regions. In general, employers in the West provide pay details in postings at the highest rate, while employers in the South are less likely to advertise salary upfront, according to the research.
And, for the most part, employers are not disclosing the pay information out of the goodness of their hearts. Pay transparency rates have grown the most in cities subject to pay disclosure laws.
Better bargaining power for job seekers
The upshot of having the new laws for job seekers is that knowing a salary range for a position can help job hunters catch a whiff of what a job is likely to pay and how far they can push in negotiating compensation.
And for many employers, posting those salaries, well, paid off.
"When it comes to pay transparency, SHRM research has found that 70% of organizations that list pay ranges in job postings say doing so has led to more people applying, while 66% said disclosing pay has increased the quality of applicants they’re seeing," Emily Dickens, chief of staff and head of public affairs at SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, told Yahoo Finance.
"Moreover, 65% of companies that list pay ranges said it makes them more competitive in attracting top talent."
One concern, though, is that now job openings have begun to decline, employers may opt to pull back on how much they reveal about their pay structure.
"It’s possible that employers may continue to advertise pay in postings, but reduce the precision of that information as recruiting intensity fades," Stahle said.
There are many reasons why employers resist posting detailed salary data. For example, knowing what a job pays elsewhere can make it more appealing for current employees to jump ship for higher pay. It can also give them the courage to request a raise based on the salaries posted by their employer for new hires in the same or similar position.
In fact, 36% of 1,300 HR professionals surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management said transparency laws caused more current employees to ask about receiving a pay raise.
As the need to hire eases, some of that might "already be happening," Stahle added. "Job postings containing pay information are less likely to advertise an exact salary or wage than they were a few years ago (only 22% mentioned precise pay this spring, down from 38% before the pandemic)," he said.
While there is much to be applauded for the open pay disclosure, the biggest flaw so far is laughably wide pay ranges, often covering more than a six-figure span.
"Indeed data shows that pay ranges have widened in areas with new pay transparency requirements since last year," Stahle said.
For example, the gap between the low and high end of salaries in San Jose increased to 25% from 17.5% in one year. A recent job posting for a software engineer at Google in San Jose pays a salary ranging from $157,000 to $235,000 plus bonus, equity, and benefits.
"People are shortchanging themselves if they look at just the salary number and not all the components that go into a compensation package," Dickens said. "Employers covered by the new law need to publish their salaries, but they remain free to also publish full compensation if it is in their interest to do so."
In general, though, salary ranges have widened most in mid-to-high paying sectors like pharmacy and medical information and have narrowed in lower-paying jobs like driving and food preparation and services, where finding and retaining workers is hardest right now, Stahle said.
"To some degree, this information, even when the range is wide, is going to help job seekers," Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, the employment search site, previously told Yahoo Finance. "It'll help them to focus on jobs that actually provide the pay that they want, rather than going down a rabbit hole, writing out a whole application, then finding that the job pays much less than they need."
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Reporter and Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a workplace futurist, a career and retirement strategist, and the author of 14 books, including "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in The New World of Work" and "Never Too Old To Get Rich." Follow her on Twitter @kerryhannon.
No comments:
Post a Comment