Determining how much income it takes just to make a “living wage” can be difficult, but a program developed by MIT does just that. PennLive.com ran the numbers for each county in Pennsylvania through the “Living Wage Calculator” hosted by MIT, and found that the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is nowhere close to a “living wage” in any county.
According to PennLive, the “living wage” is the amount of money “an individual who is the sole provider and working full time for 2,080 hours a year must earn in order to support his or her family by covering basic expenses at a bare-bones level.” They also show a “poverty wage” which has been calculated to an hourly rate for comparison’s sake.
In Indiana County, the living wage for one adult with one child is $21.72 per hour. The poverty wage is $7.81. For an adult with three children, the living wage is $33.81, and the poverty wage is $11.83. For two working adults and two children, the living wage is $22.30, versus a poverty wage of $11.83. Keep in mind, the minimum wage in Pennsylvania is $7.25.
With a few very small differences, the figures are the same for all of our neighboring counties.
The governor has advocated a new minimum wage of $12 per hour, but increasing a company’s cost for employees without increasing the revenues for those companies would result in mass layoffs, making it even more likely that families would be living below the poverty level.
You can read the PennLive report at www.pennlive.com.
