Illinois Rises Above Federal Minimum Wage

http://www.ibjonline.com/print_illinois_minimum_wage.html

This is an article about the last time the minimum wage was increased on a state level in Illinois. In light of the proposed Big Box Ordinance for living wages in Chicago, I thought it would be beneficial to find some information about where the state itself stands on the issue of a minimum wage.

The article reiterates that retail and food service will feel the impact of this increase the most, a concern we've seen expressed in many articles so far. Apparently Illinois was the first Midwestern state to set a wage above the federal. This is interesting considering the low level of immigration in the Midwest compared to other U.S. regions.

The article says that the state of Washington (in addition to Vermont) also has a cost-of-living adjustment built into their minimum wage bill to keep up with inflation, something that was originally in the Illinois bill but was pushed out during negotiations.

The article offers a different take on the type of workers holding down minimum wage jobs. Apparently, a large proportion of minimum wage workers in Southern Illinois are students at the nearby college, and Madison County Employment and Training Director David Stoecklin is quoted saying that these jobs are important entry-level steps for young people to get into the workforce. The funny thing is, these are the people who remain politically apathetic. No one quoted in these articles so far has been a student or teenager--all of the human interest storylines have involved poverty-stricken adults struggling to support their families. This may be another political spin tactic, as those people do attract more sympathy than upper-middle class students. Or perhaps it really is that the latter group does not care about starting salaries at jobs they won't keep for long.