Tennessee is the nation's leader in an important economic category — it now has the country's largest share of minimum wage workers.
WPLN reports:
New numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics make Tennessee the top spot for making $7.25 an hour. By the annual BLS figures, 7.4 percent of employees in Tennessee are paid the bare minimum. That’s an increase of 31,000 people from the year before, even as the national number of low-wage workers dropped.
Last month, in
an appearance on PBS Newshour, Gov. Bill Haslam counted himself among those who think we should tackle income inequality by doing...something other than raising the minimum wage.
Will this make a dramatic difference in the income inequality issue that we’re talking about? I think it will make some, but I think there’s a lot of other issues that will make more difference. And I think the president’s focus on education, I think long term, will make more difference. I think that’s what you’re seeing out of a lot governors is saying, hey, what we really need to do address income equality is address work force preparation."
Good news, governor. It seems Tennessee is a perfect testing ground for this hypothesis.
