The minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in Iowa matches the federally mandated minimum wage. But what is the discrepancy of what constitutes a living wage in Iowa and the reality of what many are earning at the most basic income?
The minimum wage of $7.25 an hour does not appear to be changing anytime soon in Iowa.
According to the Living Wage Calculator
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the minimum living wage for one adult in Iowa is $9.93 an hour. Poverty wages, it said, are $5 per hour.
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The required annual income to survive in Iowa for one single adult, before taxes and with expenses figured into the calculation, is $20,659. The minimum wage of $7.25 per hour amounts to $15,080 a year based on a 40-hour workweek.
If a family of one child and one adult is involved, the lowest living wage to afford necessities in Iowa is $21.27 an hour, with a poverty wage of $7 per hour. An annual income of $44,252 to meet living wage standards for a family of this size.
According to the Iowa Policy Project, a single-parent family with one child, taking childcare, clothing, food, healthcare, rent with utilities, and transportation into consideration, needed a net annual income of $35,759 to meet basic needs in 2014. Add another child and that number jumps to $47,875. These two families are without employer-provided health insurance.
Similar families with employer-provided health insurance required a little less at $33,644 for a single parent with one child and $44,702 for a single parent with two children.
Sen. Tony Bisignano, D-Des Moines,
told The Des Moines Register that "the average minimum-wage worker is 35 years old, and that 55 percent work full-time and 28 percent have children. The average minimum-wage worker earns half of his or her family's total income."
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