San
Francisco, CA, USA (October 23, 2014) -- Struggling to Make Ends
Meet on Minimum Wage, new brief by United
Way of the Bay Area, reveals that as of 2012, 29%
of Bay Area households were struggling to cover the cost of basic
needs. That's 657,000 households that cannot afford critical needs
like housing, food, health care and child care. According to the
brief, the post-recession recovery has yet to be felt by many Bay
Area households because wages for low-income workers have failed to
keep up with the high cost of living.
Since
2008, the overall cost of living has increased by an average of 26%
in San Francisco and 24% in Alameda County. Monthly housing expenses
for a San Francisco family with two adults and two children cost an
average of $1,444 in 2008, but that number jumped to $1,896 in 2014.
Yet
average wages increased just 7% for the lowest-paid workers between
2007 and 2012. According to the California Self-Sufficiency Standard,
a San Francisco family with two adults and two children would need to
earn $79,092 annually to cover the cost of basic needs. That would
require four full-time jobs at San Francisco's hourly minimum of
$10.74. In Alameda, the same family would need to earn $72,830
annually to cover the cost of basic needs. At Alameda's $9 per hour
minimum wage, that would also require four full-time jobs.
Because
the cost of living in the Bay Area is so much higher than the
national average, the Self-Sufficiency Standard is a much more
accurate predictor of need than the Federal Poverty Line for
California households. The Self-Sufficiency Standard calculates the
income needed to cover the true cost of basic needs in the specific
county where an individual or family lives.
"It's
unrealistic that parents could work four full-time minimum wage jobs
to cover the cost of basic needs for their families," said Anne
Wilson, Chief Executive Officer at United Way of the Bay Area.
"United Way of the Bay Area is proud to join a broad coalition
of civic leaders in supporting Proposition J in San Francisco and
Measure FF in Oakland, which will help more Bay Area households move
closer to achieving self-sufficiency."
Proposition
J would phase in a higher minimum wage to $15 per hour over the next
four years and benefit more than 23% of San Francisco's workforce.
Measure FF would increase Oakland's minimum wage to $12.25 and
benefit up to 30% of the city's workers.
In
addition to raising the minimum wage, United Way of the Bay Area
supports other key strategies to boost family stability: 1) increase
job training to help critical populations acquire the skills needed
to attain higher-wage jobs, 2) change policies to reward people for
moving off safety net benefits, and 3) boost collaboration among
agencies to increase the accessibility of support services.
View
the self-sufficiency brief, Struggling
to Make Ends Meet on Minimum Wage at
uwba.org/research-publications.
Data for each of the nine Bay Area counties is available upon
request.
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About
United Way of the Bay Area
United
Way of the Bay Area is a nonprofit organization, leading a movement
to cut Bay Area poverty in half by 2020. We're harnessing the
collective power of nonprofits, government, corporations, labor and
thousands of individuals to create change through giving, advocating,
and volunteering. Every year, our programs - SparkPoint, Earn It!
Keep It! Save It!, 211, MatchBridge and Community Schools - help more
than 250,000 Bay Area residents. We connect people to food and
shelter, put people back to work, bring tax dollars back to our
community, help youth succeed in school and in the workplace, and
move people toward financial stability. Founded in 1922, United Way
of the Bay Area serves Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San
Francisco, San Mateo and Solano Counties. For more information, visit
http://www.uwba.org.
Media
Contact:
Erica
Johnson
415-808-4308
