• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Kentucky Center for Economic Policy

Kentucky Center for Economic Policy

   

  • About Us
  • Press Room
  • Donate
  • Summer Policy Institute 2023

Research That Works for Kentucky

  • Topics
    • Budget & Tax
    • Criminal Justice
    • Economic Security
    • Education
    • Health Care
    • Jobs & The Economy
  • Types
    • News
    • Op-Ed
    • Research

   

  • About Us
  • Press Room
  • Donate
  • Summer Policy Institute 2023

Copyright © 2023 KyPolicy Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Sitemap

Analysis

Who Stands to Benefit from Louisville’s New Minimum Wage

Jason Bailey | January 5, 2015

An estimated 45,000 workers in Louisville/Jefferson County who would otherwise make less than $9 an hour will have higher wages once the new metro government minimum wage ordinance—the first such local law in the South—is fully implemented in two and a half years.

In addition to the workers who will directly benefit, another 13,500 who make slightly above $9 an hour could also receive a small raise when wage scales are adjusted upward, based on the experience of minimum wage increases elsewhere.

More On Economic Security: Tracking SNAP in Kentucky

Of the workers affected, an estimated 88 percent are at least 20 years old and more are over the age of 50 than are teenagers. Fifty-seven percent are women, 60 percent work full-time and 28 percent have a child in the household.

Fifty-nine percent of those workers with family income below the poverty line will benefit. Forty percent of affected workers are employed in either restaurants and food services or retail trade. See the table below for more detail.

Those workers benefitting will get smaller increases than the estimated 62,500 who would’ve received a raise from the original $10.10 proposal. But because the final ordinance also added a clause to adjust the minimum wage annually by growth in the consumer price index in the years after 2017, those workers affected are assured that their wages will not become stuck.

The final ordinance did not increase base pay for tipped workers from the current $2.13 an hour, where it has remained since 1991. The ordinance does require that tipped workers’ total wages including tips plus base pay be at least equal to the new local minimum wage. The original ordinance had increased the base pay for tipped workers to 45 percent of the new minimum wage, or $4.55 an hour for a $10.10 minimum wage.

louisvillebreakdownSource: KCEP analysis of 2013 American Community Survey data. See here for details on methodology.

 

 

FacebookTweetLinkedInEmail

Primary Sidebar

Get KyPolicy news updates in your inbox

Sign Up

Sidebar

Perspectives

Shorting State Workers’ Pay Hurts Us All

Cutting Bourbon Industry Taxes Harms the Communities That Sustain It

Lawmakers Should Help Our Kids, Not Lock More Up in Failing Juvenile System

Income Tax Reduction Is Another Blow to Rural Kentucky

Kentucky Should Not Volunteer for Greater Inequality by Becoming More Like Tennessee

Other Economic Security Items

Analysis

Tracking SNAP in Kentucky

snap

Analysis

How Kentucky Turned Away Half a Billion Dollars in Grocery Help

snap child support

Analysis

More Than 3,400 Struggling Parents Denied Food Assistance for Falling Behind on Child Support

Ky. Policy

Footer

Research that works for Kentucky

433 Chestnut Street, Berea, KY 40403

Phone: 859-756-4605

General information and inquiries: info@kypolicy.org

   

Help us make the facts free and accessible to everyone. That’s how Kentucky will thrive.

Donate

  • Topics
    • Budget & Tax
    • Criminal Justice
    • Economic Security
    • Education
    • Health Care
    • Jobs & The Economy
  • Work
    • News
    • Op-Ed
    • Research
  • About Us
  • Press Room
  • Contact

Get KyPolicy news updates in your inbox

Sign Up

Copyright © 2023 KyPolicy Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Sitemap

made by P&P
Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!