EDITORIAL: Michigan’s Minimum Wage Rises

ON SEPT. 4,  Michigan’s minimum wage will rise to $8.15 from $7.40. Back on May 28, Michigan legislators passed The Workforce Opportunity Wage Act, under the auspices of which the state’s minimum wage will increase from $7.40 to $9.25 per hour over the next four years. While politics is frequently built on incremental change, Gov. Snyder and the state’s Republican leadership had a chance to make significant progress on the state’s shamefully high rate of childhood poverty. Michigan ranks 32nd in overall child well-being nationally, down one slot since last year. In other words, under Gov. Snyder’s administration, the state’s children in poverty are worse off than they were when he took office.

While the debate begins over whether Gov. Snyder created 275,000 jobs over the past four years, while the Michigan Democratic Party uncovers embarrassing information about the governor’s appointees and advisors, while pundits pour over unemployment rates, Michigan’s children continue to suffer. Half of the children in Lansing live in poverty and 60 percent of children in Detroit live in poverty. Almost 20 percent of the children in Ann Arbor live in poverty. Childhood poverty and childhood hunger are inextricably bound to the minimum wage.

So while the state’s minimum wage rises from $7.40 to $8.15, this is not going to ameliorate childhood poverty or childhood hunger in our state. A single parent with one child must earn $19 per hour to earn a living wage that is above the federal poverty line. Michigan’s governor and the state’s elected officials have failed the state’s most vulnerable citizens miserably; they have failed the state’s children who have, for the past four years, waited to feel the impact of the Governor’s reinvention of Michigan.