City & State NY: The $30/hour McDonald’s Job Isn’t as Far-Fetched as it Sounds (Opinion)

Ten summers ago, a 23-year-old Burger King employee from Rochester caught the attention of a crowded Buffalo hall at the first of four meetings of a special State Wage Board, describing life on the then-$8.75 hourly statewide minimum wage.

 “We are poor,” Crescenzo Scipione testified on behalf of fellow burger flippers and fry cooks, some holding “Fight for 15” signs. “And we are all tired of being poor.”

The groundswell paid off – the state-set minimum wage will be $17/hour come January. But given the march of inflation, it remains too little to live on. James Parrott, senior advisor and senior fellow at The New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, said that if legislators had pegged the base wage rate to the annual inflation rate and worker productivity back when the state’s minimum wage was first set in 1960 at $1/hour, it would now exceed $34/hour.

If you’re making $20 an hour in New York City, you’re not remotely getting by.

That decades-long lag is unfortunate, especially for the livelihoods and educational prospects of grocery cashiers, security guards, delivery workers and others who make up the vast low-paid workforce. So highly lionized during the COVID-19 pandemic, today’s minimum wage workers still struggle to pay the rent. Typically, they’re not college students living at home under a parent’s roof in summer. Rather, they’re single or married breadwinners in their early 20s to early 30s.

Gwendalyn Mae, a 27-year-old security guard for a pharmacy chain and a community college graduate, shrugged when asked about her living expenses – which she said include food and clothing for her two kids, half the $2,000 rent for a flat she shares with her partner in a house in the Bronx, a $132 monthly transit pass and more. “Everything,” she said, noting she earns $20/hour, so clearly insufficient for getting by, much less ahead, even with the help of her mom. Her dream is to become a police officer or a registered nurse.

“If you’re making $20 an hour in New York City, you’re not remotely getting by,” said Paul Sonn, state policy program director of the National Employment Law Project.

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Read the full story at cityandstateny.com.