By Ben Werschkul
Yahoo Finance, Dec 28, 2020
While the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has hit poor Americans the hardest, minimum wage earners in 20 U.S. states will get raises at the start of the new year. Four more states, plus Washington, DC, will raise their minimum wages later in 2021.
Florida’s workers will get one of the biggest raises, after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure in November to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2026. The lowest-earning workers there earn $8.56 per hour and will move up to $8.65 on Jan. 1 and then $10 on Sept. 30.
Even without state mandates like Florida’s, some businesses have increased wages on their own, including Florida-based Lakewood Juices, which boosted the wage for its lowest earners to $15 four years ago. That boost “improves our own workers’ productivity,” according to Lakewood CEO Scott Fuhrman, who’s part of a national network called Business for a Fair Minimum Wage. ...
Fuhrman [contends] increased wages will help give greater buying power to more people which ultimately helps everyone. "I can only sell so much juice to the 1% so let’s try and grow the middle class and one way to do that is by raising the minimum wage," he told Yahoo Finance Live on Monday. ...
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