The last time the minimum wage in Louisiana was adjusted from $6.55/hour to where it currently sits at $7.25/hour was back in 2009. But Louisiana didn’t initiate that increase of 70 cents per hour. It was the Federal government.
Louisiana is one of five states in the U.S. which does not require a minimum wage. Louisiana has used the Federal minimum wage as a baseline. While other states and many large national employers have raised wages since the COVID-19 pandemic, Louisiana’s minimum wage has remained at $7.25/hour.
As his second term nears its end, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is urging legislators for a “modest” increase to the minimum wage.
There are two proposed bills in the current Louisiana Legislative session seeking to raise the minimum wage of certain state workers to $10/hour starting in 2024 and then to $14/hour by 2028. One attorney who has been advocating for higher wages doesn’t have much hope any increase will take place. On Wednesday, the house version of the bill failed to make it out of committee.
“As we have seen year after year, as our minimum wage has stagnated, and the cost of living, all the costs of living, have gone up, the people of our state have fallen farther behind. People are leaving the state because they don’t see a chance of doing better here. They don’t see the legislators working on their behalf and really that’s a difficult place to be in,” said Erika Zucker.
Zucker is the Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Workplace Justice Project at the Loyola College of Law in New Orleans. While Zucker says that a $10/hour or even a $14/hour minimum wage in Louisiana would be insufficient in helping thousands of workers offset the steep rises in rent, food and energy, it is better than no change at all. In a state where more than 802,000 workers, which is almost 39% of all workers in the state, earn less than $15/hour, Zucker wonders how much state lawmakers care about the real-life situations of their constituents. As she describes it, the state’s approach to the minimum wage is quite contradictory to those common claims by politicians that they’re putting Louisiana families first.
Would you be able to make it on less than $15/hour? Listen to our conversation here.
Related
