SALT LAKE CITY – Workers in Utah need to make more than three times the minimum wage to live comfortably here.
That’s the conclusion of a recent nationwide study that found that Beehive State workers face the fourth-biggest pay gap in the nation, with the minimum wage here at $7.25 per hour compared to an estimated cost of $23.91 per hour to cover basic necessities.
Research by the growth experts Artios in the United Kingdom pulled minimum wage data by state and nationally from the U.S. government statistics and real world expense data from the Living Wage Calculator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The MIT Living Wage Calculator takes into account local costs for food, childcare, healthcare, housing, transportation and other necessities to identify what a full-time worker must earn on a hourly basis to cover his or her family’s basic needs.
The worst pay gaps in the nation were found to be in Georgia and Wyoming, where the minimum wage is $5.15 an hour and workers need to earn more than 4 times that amount per hour to cover routine expenses.
Rounding out the five worst states in the nation were New Hampshire, Utah and Idaho. In those states, the hourly living wage varies from about $23 to $25, compared to an hourly minimum wages of $7.25.
“These statistics show that minimum wage rates across America are failing to keep pace with the actually cost of living in nearly every state …,” according to Andreas Voniatis, the founder of Artios.
“This puts enormous pressure on low-wage workers who must often work multiple jobs or rely on credit to make ends meet.”
Of course, given Utah’s robust economy, practical nobody in the state is actually trying to live on minimum wages.
At federal level, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that less than .2 percent of American workers earn at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
While exact figures on the percentage of Utah workers earning that wage is unavailable, federal experts say it is likely a small percentage of the overall workforce.
But many Utahns earn less than $17 per hour, making them low-wage workers by federal standards. BLS estimates put that number at about one in four Utah workers, or about 25 percent of the state’s workforce.
Those low-wage workers include nearly 51 percent of Utah’s single parents, according to the online reference library Axios. That’s the seventh highest rate in the U.S., exceeding even high poverty states like West Virginia and Alabama.
An estimated 34 percent of Utah’s working mothers make less than $17 per hour, exceeded the national average of 28 percent. By contrast, only about 16 percent of Utah fathers are paid that little.
Utah is by no mean alone when it comes to the pay gap between minimum and living wages.
Voniatis emphasizes that a staggering 18 states all require workers to earn roughly triple the federal minimum wage just to cover basic costs.
Despite those statistics, however, concern over unintended consequences have made many legislatures loathe to tinker with their states’ minimum wage levels.
“What’s particularly striking is that even in states with the smallest wage gaps,” Voniatis added, “workers still need to earn twice the minimum wage to cover their basic needs.”