{"id":17145,"date":"2013-05-07T11:05:46","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T17:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=17145"},"modified":"2013-05-15T16:40:03","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T22:40:03","slug":"bottom-rung-living-on-minimum-wage-in-idaho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2013\/05\/07\/bottom-rung-living-on-minimum-wage-in-idaho\/","title":{"rendered":"Bottom Rung: Expenses Are Tough To Pay On Idaho&#8217;s $7.25 Minimum Wage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One in 13 hourly workers in Idaho earned minimum wage last year. That&#8217;s <a title=\"As Idaho\u2019s Neighboring States Increase Minimum Wage, More Workers Could Seek Jobs Out Of State\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2013\/01\/02\/as-idahos-neighboring-states-increase-minimum-wage-more-workers-could-seek-jobs-out-of-state\/\" target=\"_blank\">$7.25 an hour<\/a>.The share of Idaho workers making minimum wage has increased from 5 percent in 2011 to <a title=\"Idaho Leads The Nation In Minimum Wage Workers\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2013\/02\/27\/idaho-leads-nation-in-minimum-wage-workers\/\" target=\"_blank\">7.7 percent of the hourly workforce in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That bump means Idaho has a larger share of minimum wage workers than any other state in the country.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div id=\"piktowrapper-embed\">\n<div class=\"pikto-canvas-wrap\">\n<div class=\"pikto-canvas\">\n    <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n(function(d){\nvar js, id = 'pikto-embed-js', ref = d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];\nif (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}\njs = d.createElement('script'); js.id = id; js.async = true;\njs.src = \"https:\/\/magic.piktochart.com\/assets\/embedding\/embed.js?UID=d4092555-f542-4d9a-a596-b15979f50dd7\"\nref.parentNode.insertBefore(js, ref);\n}(document));\n<\/script><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is the jumping off point for a series we&#8217;re calling <em>Bottom Rung<\/em>. For the next couple of weeks, we&#8217;ll explore why the number of workers earning minimum wage has increased so rapidly, how Idaho&#8217;s status as a low-wage state is impacting the workforce, and what&#8217;s being done to reverse the trend.<\/p>\n<p>In this infographic, we look at how a minimum-wage income stacks up against typical household expenses. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics&#8217; figures aren&#8217;t a perfect representation of how much it costs to live in Idaho. The survey data is broken down by a few western regional centers. Boise isn&#8217;t one of them, so the numbers are a regional average. That&#8217;s as specific as the agency gets. There is some Idaho-specific data available through the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.c2er.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Council for Community and Economic Research<\/a>, but that information is skewed to represent the wealthiest households.<\/p>\n<p>And consider the infographic only includes<del><\/del> basic costs. It <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/cex\/22012\/midyear\/region.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">doesn&#8217;t include the cost<\/a> of healthcare, education, car insurance, car payments, cell phone, internet, clothes, personal care items or savings. The housing cost visualized is based on paying rent, not a mortgage.<\/p>\n<p>Still, if a 2.6 person household has one wage-earner making $7.25 an hour, it&#8217;s easy to see there is more money going out the door than coming in.<\/p>\n<p>We want to know where you fall on this chart. Are you among the minimum, average or above average? How are you getting by?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One in 13 hourly workers in Idaho earned minimum wage last year. That&#8217;s $7.25 an hour.The share of Idaho workers making minimum wage has increased from 5 percent in 2011 to 7.7 percent of the hourly workforce in 2012. That bump means Idaho has a larger share of minimum wage workers than any other state [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":17250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[230,229,143],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17239,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17145\/revisions\/17239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}