Get the Facts

A Strong Minimum Wage Can Help Working Families, Businesses and Our Economy Recover

• Right now, full-time minimum wage workers make just $290 a week. That’s barely $15,000 a year working full-time— simply not enough money to live on when the cost of everything else is increasing.
     
• Meanwhile, millionaire CEOs have been giving themselves huge raises. In 1990, the average CEO made 85 times the average American worker. Today, that CEO makes 263 times more. Raising the minimum wage puts working families first, and says that we value the hard work of waitresses, childcare workers, and nursing home employees.
    
• Most minimum wage workers are adults, many with families to raise. Working full time they make $290 a week – less than it takes to pay for gas, food, rent, health and child care. Raising the minimum wage says that we value the hard work – especially tough jobs done by waitresses, child care workers, nursing home employees.
     
• Almost half a million Missouri families would get a raise through this initiative - pumping many millions into our state’s economy. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates that for every $1 raise for a minimum wage worker, there is $3,500 in new spending in the next year. Most of our minimum wage workers are employed by major profitable corporations like McDonalds, Walmart and Sodexho that already pay these wages in other states. Let’s tell them Missouri’s workers are worth it.
    
• Nineteen other states that have already raised their minimum wage higher than the federal minimum. States like Nevada, Washington, Oregon and neighboring Illinois are already at $8.25 or higher.