The Cost of a $15 Minimum Wage
So, I've been engaging in multiple conversations on Twitter lately about the costs of a $15 minimum wage. Yes, I realize Twitter isn't a great place to have an in depth discussion, which is part of why I'm writing this here.
Now, this post is going to be examining the financial aspect, and I will be assuming the most expensive numbers I can for a "worst case scenario" view on the costs. To get this, I'll be looking at a few different businesses, assuming the entirety of their employee amount is paid bare minimum, and that it would be a $15 minimum everywhere in the country. And I'll be basing the financial cost on increasing from the average minimum (7.11) rather than the standard 7.25. And with all this out of the way, lets crunch some numbers.
I'd like to start with everyone's favorite go to business for arguing against and for a minimum wage increase: McDonald's. McDonald's latest employee total (for the US, that is) is stated to be around 420,000 people. So, assuming every employee made just the minimum wage (7.11 average), increasing to $15/hour would come out to a $3,313,800/hour increase. Alright, sounds like a lot. And since I'm trying to assume the most expensive possible outcome, let's assume every employee is a full time employee (yes, I know how funny that sounds). So, 40 x 3,313,800 = 132,552,000 x 52 = $6,892,704,000/year. Zounds, that's a big number, isn't it? It's worth noting, however, that people have argued that it would cost McDonald's $8 Billion to go to $15. In 2013, when McDonald's had less employees. But hey, we're sorta close to that in our most expensive calculations that in no way reflect reality. So they have a great lock on predicting fantasy scenarios.
On to part 2 of this calculation. I've heard people argue that a Big Mac would cost $10 as a result of a $15 minimum wage, so let's test that. First, I need to find how much product McDonald's sells exclusively in the US, which I haven't found anywhere yet. So, more math ahead. McDonald's sells around 75 burgers/second, which comes out to around 6,480,000/day, or 2,365,200,000/year. So, 2,365,200,000/36,615 (locations world wide) = 64,596/store on average. x14,157 (McDonald's in US) = 914,485,572 sold in the US alone (estimated, anyway). 6,892,704,000/914,485,572 = 7.54. Comes out to $11/Big Mac.
But that's if we only apply the costs of the increase to burgers exclusively. We're not including a huge portion of the McDonald's menu in this estimation, like fries, drinks, or breakfast items, so the potential increase is likely significantly lower, and I'm not even certain my math is correct, as McDonalds sells around 550 Million Big Macs alone in the US yearly, and the only other solid US sales only number I found was 500 Million coffees each year, so between these two items alone we're already reducing the average menu item price increase. And again, this is assuming the most expensive numbers I can figure.
So, enough about McDonald's. How about the largest employer in the US: Wal-Mart? With 1.4 Million employees, we're looking at a much larger number. Again, assuming a full time 40 hour week at average 7.11 minimum wage, that equation comes out as 40 x 52 x 7.89 x 1,400,000 = 22,975,680,000/year. That's a huge number. But unlike McDonald's, I can't easily break this down into a per product cost increase. I could, however, break this down into a sales/hour increase. So 7.89 x 1,400,000 = 11,046,000. Wal-Mart makes $36,750,000 in sales/hour. So 36,750,000/11,046,000 = 3.33 (rounded). I'll be honest, I'm not certain if this is the calculations I should be using, or if I should be calculating it as a 33% increase on product prices to boost sales totals/hour up an amount equivalent to 11,046,000. But, it doesn't honestly seem that big a deal to me personally if I'm paying an average of $3 more or 33% more per product if it would mean a person wouldn't have to choose between a couple meals or a new pack of underwear.
So far, using these most expensive numbers, it doesn't come across to me as being that expensive financially. And remember, these numbers being used are ridiculous extremes. In reality, not every single employee is being paid the absolute minimum, which means that all these big numbers really wouldn't be as big as they are. And this is also based on a universal $15 minimum, which frankly I don't support, because the reality is that local economies vary with population sizes. So while I support a $15 minimum in big cities, and even $20 minimums in places like New York City or LA, I also support $10 or $11 minimum in smaller communities like mine, where the cost of living is way cheaper. And I also support the idea that teenagers have a separate minimum wage that is lower, but still fair, as teenagers generally don't have to worry about the same expenses that adults do.
Now, there are certainly other aspects of what raising the minimum wage does and involves that I didn't bother touching here, and I'm not certain I have any credible qualification to touch on those aspects. I'm just a guy who can understand economics, and who is great at math (how many people do you know who finished school with a grade above 100% in math?), and that's about all I'm good for.
If you have any information that can help me clear up some of my above calculations, or have any corrections, please mention it below. Otherwise, discuss away as usual.
Comments
The McDonald's answer is 4.3%
Here is the study from 2015 conducted by Purdue University.
Here is the abstract
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2015/Q3/study-raising-wages-to-15-an-hour-for-limited-service-restaurant-employees-would-raise-prices-4.3-percent.html
Big Mac goes from $3.99 to $4.16
Here is the ThinkProgress discussion
There have been other studies as well. The thing, for the large chains, employee cost is minimal compared to other costs such as ingredients/supplies, transportation and real estate.
The big thing to keep in mind about Micky D's is that the corporation makes it's money on owning the real estate and leasing it back to the franchisee. The cost burden is paid by the franchise owners, who's biggest cost is paying the Overlords of Oak Brook (corporate)
____________________________________________________________________________
"I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it. "
-Niccolo Machiavelli
"Sorry Hillary"
-TheJerry
Fri, 12/02/2016 - 3:51pm —
Fri, 12/02/2016 - 3:51pm — TheJerry
Thank you! You've saved my having to look that up and have it post at the bottom of the page, lol.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The average hourly wage at McDonalds is now $10/hr according
to the Google.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
A couple of notes
The higher figure for 2013 probably includes the employer portion of social security and medicare taxes. With wages locked in at $15/hour, they cannot pass those costs to employees in the form of lower wages as they usually do. There may also be an additional health care benefit costs involved as well as sick time and vacation time. Ignoring the tax deductions of these benefits goes a long way to making corporations look like the victim.
As to the costs of higher wages being passed down in the form of higher product prices, there are many issues that will effect that. One would be the fact that the cost of operations (including employees) are tax deductible which will considerably lower the cost of paying employees more. Another benefit to the company would be a reduction in employee turnover which will lower training costs and administration costs. Healthier employees would also result in lower costs to the company. On and on and so forth.
McDonald's CEO received $7.91 million in compensation in 2015. Maybe he would have to live on a million less. McDonald's profits were $1.1 Billion in the first quarter of 2016.
The Walmart CEO received $19.8 million in compensation in 2015. Maybe he would have to live on a million less. In 2015, Walmart posted a profit of $14.7 Billion.
A side benefit to these corporations to raising the incomes of their workers is that those workers could then afford to buy their products, further increasing their sales.
The price of products do no have to sky rocket or even increase at all, but these and the rest of the corporations are not going to listen to anyone suggesting that they give up any profit. After all, there are still things out there that the corporations might still want to own. Like our souls.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Of course there's no need for product costs to increase
I'm just operating under the assumption that the corporate owners will pass the increased expense onto the consumer long before they sacrifice even $1 of their own profits.
And an extremely accurate
assumption that is.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
I Think It's a Faulty Assumption. Look at My Comment Below. nt
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Of course they will IF we allow them to continue
controlling the narrative. The problem for the rest of us is getting the truth out to the public with real facts rather than corporate scary/lying numbers saying that a yucky hamburger is going to cost $11.
US Americans really need to be re-educated about money and work. We still have a very unhealthy worship of the "aristocracy."
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Actually, you couldn't pay me
Actually, you couldn't pay me to eat a Big Mac, even if I wasn't off standard processed flours and meats and a bunch of other (toxic and generally not-very food-y) things which make me ill and often taste like non-food-ish inedibles/petrochemicals to me anyway. Oddly enough, I used to like them from time to time, back when they were actually big and cheap...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Other than twice for emergency reasons
(WiFi access), I haven't been in a McDonald's since some time in the 80s. I boycotted them when they decided to issue a statement as a corporation that they would not buy their potatoes from Idaho if a pro-abortion bill was passed there. I didn't feel that a corporation had the right to act as a person and make choices for others. Little did I know that decades later, the Supreme Court would give them life.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
I Do Not Think That Assumption of Conventional Wisdom Is Right.
It runs afoul of one of the more brutally simple, ironclad maxims of economics: an item is priced at whatever the market will bear.
I believe that the latter is more ironclad and more important -- it's an historical maxim. I think the former is a simple excuse that comes from neoliberal hegemony.
If your product is already priced at "what the market will bear", how do you pass new costs on to the consumer? It's like an economic Koan, ain't it?
So, I don't buy the "passing on costs" as a rule. It's more marketing gimmick, than economic maxim.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
But if people are being paid more
Wouldn't it stand to reason that the market would then be able to bear a higher price on items?
I'm not even sure that "iron clad rule" applies to the US anyway. Surely we would have seen items coming down in price as more and more of the population has fallen below the poverty line.
Frankly, I think you give these millionaires and billionaires who have kept wages stagnant for decades far, far too much credit.
I Think That Would Hold True If Wages Go Up.
I think that's THE iron clad rule.
I think it gets covered with a CPI kind of deal:
Ancillary goods are too expensive so:
people go without health insurance or "bronze" shit
live with multiple roommates
etc.
A basket of non-comparables...
How is charging what the market will bear vs passing on costs to the consumer giving Big Corporate & the Oligarchs too much credit?
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
I don't even understand your arguments here.
Basket of noncomparables? What?
Besides... People Earning More and Paying Less Would Be
considered theft.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
But people paying more and earning less isn't?
I consider that to be actual theft. People earning more and paying less? That would be generosity. Also, what you said here contradicts your argument against the idea that costs would be passed onto consumers.
I Agree With You on Theft. Unpacking What I'm Talking About Is
tough...
First off, costs passed on to the consumer vs what the market will bear are not either or propositions. Costs passed on to the consumer are the excuse for draconian what the market will bear.
That is a key point. You are looking at it as an either or -- a false dichotomy. It's not an either or. Costs passed on to the consumer are an excuse.
Costs are going up, right? Are people still buying the goods? Then the market, obviously, can bear more. How can they make the consumer accept paying more and escape the wrath of cheated consumers?
Look at your power bill. Those itemized fees are not new. They're not additional costs foisted on the company and subsequently passed on to the consumer.
They are an excuse, a marketing trick, to make it look like they're not charging you more because they can. This is done so you will accept the cost increases and place blame on the government, environmentalists, or other opponents of unfettered profits.
Cel phones and cable companies... people, on the whole, are making less, right? Well why do costs keep going up? Is it because the company is passing off additional costs to the consumer? I don't think so. It's because there is wiggle room in the economy. The only either or is you can either buy it or go without. It's a fluid tightrope walk of shifting Demographics and marketing tricks.
The market is bearing the additional cost by shifting the market demographics and front loading discounts with balloon payments in the future on the company's end.
On the consumer's end, there is taking on debt, shifting spending practices (cheaper, less nourishing food, not getting a new car, living with roommates or mom and dad's basement), and by lifestyle changes: going without other goods or services, like health insurance or a new car.
This is similar to the CPI basket of comparable goods calculation -- substituting spam for ham -- but the goods and services are not comparable.
Again, it's not either the costs get passed on to the consumer or what the market will bear. It's what the market will bear. Passing on to the consumer is a marketing ploy and a device to place blame.
That unquestionable blame from buying into the "costs passed on to the consumer" is then used to justify and influence public policy that creates more profits.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
And don't forget that if they paid people
enough to live on, there wouldn't be nearly as many fast food and Walmart employees collecting government benefits in the form of food stamps and welfare. This aspect of the minimum wage discussion annoys me the most. As long as companies are allowed to pay their employees wages that are insufficient to live on, it's the taxpayers who end up picking up the balance. In effect, the taxpayers are subsidizing these companies profits.
Everyone on the right loves to scream about lazy people who collect welfare and food stamps, but never stop to realize that many of them work full time and still can't make ends meet. The taxpayer dollars being spent are actually a government funded welfare giveaway to the profits of the greedy owners and shareholders of these companies.
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
George W. Bush
Not sure how well that wage
differential between adults and teenagers would work - then you'd have employers ONLY hiring teenage labor if they could save a buck.
As WindDancer13 points out, if some of these CEO's would accept a few million a year less, this might even be a moot point. And they will have more customers by paying more too. That, to me, is where the greed comes in - to think someone can't live on a million a year less is absolutely ludicrous. It's pure selfishness and I really do not understand people who don't get that.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
The problem with hiring only teenagers
is that there's a conflict with school related activities, including sports and time for homework and study. Sure, there may be the incentive to hire teenagers for working the evening and weekend hours, but I'm not sure if that'd be much of a difference compared to how things already are.
two of the original purposes of minimum wage laws were:
A. To ensure that the adults in a household earned enough money that their children did not also need to go out and work to keep the household afloat.
B. To ensure that adults trying to support families did not have to compete in the labor market with other people's children.'
Differential minimum wages thwart B to the extent that they will also thwart A.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Once upon a time, McDonalds was a place for kids
and young adults to work. That wage model never evolved to address adult employees with adult responsibilities. Kids are paid minimum wage so they can pay for their cars and dates and learn the ways of the food service industry. Same for all the pizza joints. You didn't see a 40 year old guy with a bit of gray in his beard driving around delivering pizzas until the 80's after misanthropic Reaganomics began what would become a thorough remodeling of the American economy favoring the wealthy while creating the so-called cut throat yuppie class. Before that, some important manufacturing jobs began disappearing in the 70's due to stiff overseas competition in the automotive industry, mainly from Japan. I was 16 years old driving a VW Rabbit owned and insured by the pizza shop. Those were the days.
I went into all of this because we could spend all day hashing out the math of what it would cost to pay these necessary higher wages. I think of it in simpler terms. If there is too much in one place then there is not enough in another. Corporations in general need to make the employee and the customer the stakeholders, not the shareholders and overpaid CEO's and board members. who can never be worth what they are paid by engineered stock options, etc..
It's all about balance.
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
The forgotten point of
The forgotten point of business is to form part of a healthy economy by providing decent-quality goods and/or services which people are eager to buy and/or use, in order to make a decent living with a reasonable profit, while forming one of the economic wheels keeping things going smoothly by (often) buying decent-quality supplies locally and paying employees recognized as being essential to business success sufficient for a healthy and comfortable life-style so that they also form part of a potentially huge customer base able to afford these products.
When all business is of this nature (run by actual business people working within the actual business and aware of how best to maintain that business) and much of it local and circulating money around the local economy, all goes well. When the money is virtually all being drained away and out of the system by distant CEOs, the thriving little pond becomes the smelly marsh gradually converted into a desert surrounded by more of the same and eventually even the vultures starve.
Corporations not having local management make necessary decisions with a long-range, business (rather than the all-too-typical CEO short-term personal profiteering) perspective and human concerns are often grossly inefficient and destructive of even the very businesses they profit from. Distant CEO's can't see what piles up in the corners they cut and really couldn't care less, because they're looking for quarterly bonuses, not for maintaining the businesses themselves or the societies without which the businesses cannot survive.
Nothing can grow forever without growing over and destroying the environment which sustains it, and therefore itself.
Too big is a fail.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The avg. cashier scans
640 items / hour. x 8 hr. / shift = 5,000 items / shift / cashier x10 cashiers / shift = 50,000 items / shift x 3 shifts / day = 150,000 items per day x 364 days = 54,600,000 items /yr. x 1,000 stores (?) = 54,600,000,000 total items / year. $23 Billion / yr. (payrolll) √ 54 Billion items / yr. = 43¢ / item.
Walmart = 43¢ / item. Some would go up a dime, others $3, $4. With the avg. customer purchasing 16 items their Walmart trip would cost an extry $7.00.
I suspect a Happy Meal / Big Mac would go up a buck or so.
A $15 min. wage would cost the avg. family some $20 - $25 a week, $1,200 /yr.
Best scenario would be a $12 /hr. min. wage with a $1 raise each year to $15 /hr. giving families time to absorb the cost.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
For wal-mart
that's somewhere in the ballpark of 5000 locations in the US.
Loving that math laid out so cleanly.
And I also support the idea
If we're assigning a different value for the same work done by different people maybe we should ensure that women get paid less, since of course paying them more would encourage them to get out of the kitchen/nursery? And everyone knows that people from 3rd world countries are used to getting by on a fraction of the food/income that USAians expect, so anyone who looks like they might have come from one of those "other" places ought to be paid less too, right?
Work is work. A particular work activity (let's pick janitorial services) should have the same pay whether it is done by a teenager, woman,or WASP male with a PhD.
Should we be grilling every prospective teenage employee to see if they are a middle-class kid looking for pocket money or a low-income kid trying to help keep a roof over his/her family/food on their table and then paying them a different amount depending on how "worthy" they are of the pay rate?
Can we not do the false equivalency thing?
Or straw manning? I'd much prefer we stick to honest discussion, not guilt trip based identity politics. If you can't do that, you're not worth my time.
Honest discussion?
I honestly feel that if a job is worth doing for $xx.xx, then any person doing it should be paid that amount, no matter what age/gender/class/education etc group they happen to fall into. You appear to not hold that opinion, so aren't you the one engaging in "identity politics" by creating artificial divisions among people in the work force?
You seem to be seeking confrontation
If you weren't seeking that, straw manning and using divisive slang was a big mistake. I'm not going to give you the confrontation you look for. The only thing I'll give you is that by your advice, nobody should ever be given a raise. Why should they be paid more for the same work, after all? Same for raising the minimum wage.
I Don't Think That's a Straw Man. nt
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
I agree. The lower rate was,
I agree. The lower rate was, I've heard, supposed to encourage business to employ teenagers in holiday jobs where long-term job loyalty was not an issue, to make training for short-term employment worth-while. However, with corporations taking virtually everything over and 'human assets' being regarded as fungible, this is hardly an issue, never mind an excuse, for any lack of pay equity.
It also used to be that workers received regular raises over time for working hard, especially over the first year or so, generally every few months though this period, with at least annual raises thereafter. Although I'm guessing that this is probably not common in corporate McJobs?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The cost of theft at Walmart is about $3 billion per year,
http://fortune.com/2015/06/05/walmart-theft/
The cashiers at Walmart tell me it's mostly their own employees. Pay them a living wage instead of poverty wages, maybe they'll buy their necessities instead of stealing them, giving Walmart at least a $6 billion advantage. I say at least because they will probably buy even more stuff than what they're stealing now, since the theft is limited to what they think they can get away with. Also, they currently make a minimum of $10/hr, http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2016/01/20/walmart-hikes-hourly... Possibly the bigger problem is that about half their workers are part-time, many involuntarily, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/business/next-goal-for-walmart-workers...
Maybe they can allow employee losses from attrition and provide more fulltime hours. On the other hand, then they'll need benefits. At any rate, the cost to boost wages to $15 is way lower than your estimate. And I agree they should just accept lower profits. The Waltons have more wealth than nearly half of the rest of the country, http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/mar/14/bernie-s/berni... Enough already.
I don't know where you get $7.11 from. It's illegal to pay lower than $7.25 unless you're a tipped worker. Since the people you're calculating for aren't tipped, I don't think you should start from $7.11.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
The figures I used
The $7.11 is the average minimum wage. Yes, 7.25 is supposedly the minimum, but that's not the case in all states. Some states don't even have a mandatory minimum wage at all (like Alaska). Those few states drag the numbers down a bit.
And my estimates are so large because I wanted to put up a worst case, most expensive possible outcome for businesses scenario, which would mean assuming every single worker being paid the absolute minimum and working 40 hours/week, rather than the estimated average and hours. I wanted to demonstrate that even the most expensive wage increase we could get out of an increase to 15/hour, if it were passed on to consumers, would not increase the prices of products and services nearly as bad as people are led to believe they would.
And you're probably right that I shouldn't really start from 7.11, because who honestly is working for $0 in Alaska? But I doubt it would make that big a change in the final calculations, and it would only serve to make the figures I used just slightly less ridiculous and extreme.
I realize you were trying to make a worst-case scenario,
but I do think it's much better than that. As far as Alaska with "0" minimum wage, they still have to pay federal minimum wage. The min wage is the larger of federal, state or local laws. That's why no one is working for 0.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
Alberta, Canada $15 minimum wage
Think about it - people earning minimum wages will spend every extra penny within the local economy. The high paid CEO will spend any extra money he "earns" holidaying in the Caribbean or investing in bonds and stocks. If Hillary would have embraced Bernie's $15 minimum wage policy instead of her insulting $12, she most likely would now be president elect.
I doubt even supporting a $20 minimum
Would have helped her win. The people who supported Trump could care less about the minimum wage. What good would that wage be if their jobs got shipped over seas because of the TPP deal she supported so heavily (until it became a liability to do that)? Plus, would anybody outside of her loyalists have believed her to be sincere about supporting even a $12 minimum? Especially given that her campaign team and closest allies aren't too keen of even that amount.
Your math and assumptions look good to me
I work in food service at a grill cooking breakfast and flipping lunch-time burgers for one of the big three food service providers in America (in a corporate center). I make $13.60/hr with 30 cent annual raises. The wages are weak. What we do have at the big 3 (Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass) is great health insurance and a 401k. [So if you need good health insurance get a job at your local college or university food service, or the like. They are always looking and they like us older folks.]
I definitely think that these corporations could afford to pay us more. They are publicly traded (because they make money for the capital class) and I think they could, if prompted, negotiate raises for their cooks into their food service contracts with the institutions they service (schools, arenas, corporate centers, etc).
Cornell used Aramark while I was there.
And most of the food service employees were older; I had not considered the health insurance aspect. Being salaried, I never did real hourly compensation calculations, but we were expected to do 50-60 hour workweeks, and smile while doing that. Before my two kids were enrolled in public schools I DID calculated that I worked for no profit at all, except as the carrier of the family health insurance, just to pay for day care.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Do you get an annual "cost of benefits" statement?
These are becoming popular, as employers who offer good benefits want to be sure their employees understand the full financial value of those benefits.
To put this in perspective, I know nothing about the great healthcare benefit you're getting, but the one my employer provides costs them almost as much as your annual wage.
Your point about university food service jobs is well-taken. Of course, one of the things Walker did in Wisconsin was directly target those health-care benefits, dramatically increasing the state employees' "share".
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Have not seen a "cost of benefits" statement
Would be interesting though. I have the "silver" insurance plan which I pay 40 bucks/2weeks going up in 2017 to 46 bucks/2 weeks. It's through US Healthcare.
I worked for Sodexo at a Big 10 school for a while and am now at a corporate office building in the employee cafeteria. The college kids were fun but I am liking the corporate clientele here in Minnesota. Nice people. Also, there's no down time due to the numerous school breaks.
My boss says they're always looking for cooks at the various accounts (in area schools and corporate centers)...
My company pays $900/mo in benefits for me
And pays me $1840/mo for an average 160 hr month. That's $2740/mo if my math is correct.
I appreciate the money they spend on my benefits, though not everyone does.
I still dish out $191/mo for health, dental, vol life, child life, long term disability, and mediflex (co pays $25/mo into that too).
Not included in either total pay out, is the matched 3% 401k thing.