Google tells us this:
"The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 2.7 percent in 2016 to 2.3 percent in
2017. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis."So, what's all the noise about?
How many people are making a nickel over minimum wage? Or a dollar over minimum wage?
Cindy Hamilton
The noise is mostly for the states still using the federal minimum of $7.25 from 2009 and no adjustment. The reason it changed is that many states saw the problem and did something about it, some better than others.
How many workers do you know that would be happy in their job getting the same was they got in 2009?
Or are making minimum wage but only part-time.
My pension hasn't gone up since 2009. Fuck'm.
It didn't say they excluded part time but Ed has a point. A lot of states have a higher minimum wage so they will not be in Frank's stat. That might actually be a better way to deal with it anyway. The cost of living varies widely across the country. One size does not fit all. Even the federal civil service salary schedule adjusts for cost of living, up to 41% higher in the Bay area of California. Maybe they should use that same adjustment to the minimum wage if the feds really want to be doing this.
Hmmmnm, mine has. So has SS, trivial as it was.
SS barely covered the hike in Part B and your pension must be government or union.
That still does not address your pension. Probably not SS either if we get Carter era inflation. Most investments were not even keeping up.
From what little I know about pensions, many from companies do not go up after you start them. Mine does not go up from the starting ammount.
Maybe some of the government ones do ?
The SS has not kept up at all with the cost of living. Each year they change the rules as to what they use to compute the cost of living. Just glad I put a fair ammount in the 401k type retirement. Many companies do not even have pensons. This past year my IRA made as much as I would have made before taxes in over 2 working years. Had my SS money gone in to the same IRA plan I would get about twice as much as the SS pays.
Once in over 20 years that I have been collecting a pension, they gave everyone a $40/month increase. However in all, pension has effectively gone down by withdrawal of health care support. First they made us pay half of any increase and then the full increase. Next year they are dropping dental support which will cost me $400. Pensions are secured by law but not promised health care support and companies have gotten away with it in court.
Now my company offers no pension or healthcare support but gives extra for 401k. You are on your own which if you can save are better off.
SS also effectively goes down when you consider small cost of living and then increased medicare cost. One year, in Obama era, medicare cost exceeded minute increase in SS so SS checks were smaller.
Pensions from companies are generally going to be a fixed annuity. They make a one time pay out to a financial institution. Back in the olden days a company doing well might throw more money in the pot and raise the value of the annuity but that is not likely these days. If anything they will raid the pension fund and reduce it to the minimum required by ERISA. Public service unions will add COLAs to their contracts and that is one reason why so many big cities are going broke. They have underfunded or unfunded pension plans. Regular unions used to see regular COLA adjustments but my FIL says UAW is lagging behind in that. My pension check is about the same as his, we were making the same kind of money and he worked there 10 years longer than me.
The company I worked for has changed owners several times. The first one had a pension fund of about 2 times the required or needed money. They raided that money to make the company more attractive to buyers, or else the buyers took that extra money. Hard to remember what they did about 30 years ago other than I remember a TV special on a show like 60 minutes showing how they raided that money.
One thing I seem to remember is the pension funds are somehow connected to a sort of insurance thing where if the pension fund or company funding it goes under, then you still get a guaranteed pension, but it may be less than what you were getting.
PBGC will match your core benefit but that will not include anything but the pension itself. No other benefits COLAs or other things you might get are covered. I also understand if you retired early and got a full pension, they might recalculate your benefit using the original formula and that will might much less. In my case the pension is actually a paid up annuity so the failure would have to be Fidelity. We already know the meager amount they throw at my health care is at risk with nothing more than a vote from the board. It is less than $4k a year so I would survive.
"defined benetit" pensions fo not change. Indexed pensions change. Defined benefit pensions are also known as final salary pensions - you get a percentage of your last year's salary depending on how many years you have "invested"
Don't know about states bat all Candian government pensions - federal or provincial, are "indexed". Never had a "work" pension but did manage to squirrel away a "small" nestegg. It is possible for a couple to live on government pension if both worked and contributed for a reasonable length of time at a reasonable income rate and you own your home free and clear.. We don't live high, but we manage
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