Tricia works in a restaurant, and has three children and an apartment in Queens. After working a 40-hour week she brings home a measly $500 – BEFORE taxes! But her moment to finally make more money might be here.

After years of workers standing up against low pay and dead-end jobs, employers are finally raising wages! Even though everyone is more than deserving, not everyone is included in this pay bump.

It’s never too late to make history: for the first time, many service workers are making well above $15 an hour. Unfortunately, this doesn’t include everyone. 

While the federal minimum wage is still at a ridiculous $7.25 an hour, many employers are hungry to fill empty job positions. So they’re doing whatever it takes to fill them – including paying workers a more fair wage. 

But the best part is workers are standing up for themselves in a way hiring managers can’t ignore. 

Many job candidates are refusing to accept work that pays anything less than $15. Workers have been fighting for fair wages for years – and it seems like the pandemic has finally forced companies to do it. 

This is a great win for many low-income workers – but countless others are being left out and remain underpaid. $7.25 is a near-impossible wage to live off of, and it sets so many people up for failure. 

The only way to truly fix this problem is to, at the very least, increase the minimum wage nationally at the SAME RATE as the cost of living.

While we should celebrate this pay increase, because it helps so many workers and their families, the federal minimum needs to go up. Families can’t survive on $7.25 an hour comfortably – and everyone deserves to have a living wage!