The minimum wage around the world
Fast-food workers are planning to march in 270 cities on Tuesday, mounting their largest nationwide strike as part of their ongoing effort to see the minimum wage raised to $15 per hour. Here's where the current U.S. minimum wage stacks up many other countries around the world.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international policy group that monitors and analyzes 34 countries, recently tweeted the following chart:
It illustrates the after-tax value of the hourly minimum wage, in US dollars, in the OECD countries that have instituted one.
Australia and Luxembourg lead the group with wages over $9 an hour each, and Latvia and Mexico are at the bottom with wages under $2.
The US, where the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, or $6.26 after taxes, ranks 11th.
Broken down by state, however, there is some variation among the 45 states that require a minimum wage, ranging from $9.05 per hour in Washington, DC, to $5.15 an hour in Georgia and Wyoming. The Guardian reported that 21 states raised the minimum wage in 2015, and multiple states have begun the process of raising their minimum wages to $10.10 an hour.
Business Insider's Myles Udland reported that the US government currently spends $152.8 billion a year supporting working families who are paid so little they're still in need of assistance.
Read the OECD's entire report.
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