Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Numbers on minimum wage earners doubted

Economist: State doesn't track those making $5.15 per hour

CORRECTION -- 3/3/05
A story in Wednesday's Review-Journal misstated an estimate of the size of Nevada's work force earning $6.95 or less an hour. State Economist Jim Shabi said the bottom 10 percent of the state's work force of about 1 million people earn that wage.

CARSON CITY -- Despite assertions that 51,000 Nevadans earn the minimum wage, the state does not track the number of people who earn the $5.15 per hour minimum, an economist said Tuesday.

State Economist Jim Shabi said he does not know where AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Danny Thompson got the figure. Shabi works for the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

Thompson mentioned the figure in hearings on Assembly Bill 87, which raises the minimum wage by $1 per hour for workers 18 and older. Approved on a 33-8 vote Monday in the Assembly, the bill goes to the Senate for additional hearings. The pay increase, if approved, would become effective Oct. 1.

If employers pay health insurance for minimum wage workers, they would not have to pay the $1 per hour increase.

Thompson did not return a call Tuesday, but Paul Brown of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada said the figure comes from an Economic Policy Institute analysis. The AFL-CIO is a member of the Progressive Leadership Alliance.

Jeff Chapman, who compiled the information for the Economic Policy Institute, could not be reached. The institute calls itself a nonprofit, nonpartisan think thank. Chapman, in a 2002 story, advocated raising the minimum wage to $6.65 per hour to make up for inflation since it was last increased in 1997.

He calculated that 51,000 people, or 5.4 percent of Nevada's workforce, earned the minimum in 2003. The U.S. Department of Labor, in a 2002 study, found only 3 percent of the workforce nationally earns the minimum wage.

Many employees in tourist-dependent Nevada also earn tips. Under state law, employers must pay a base $5.15 per hour minimum wage, regardless of whether an employee earns tip income.

The 2004 state wage survey found gaming dealers were the occupation with the lowest mean wage. They receive a mean wage of $6.40 per hour, meaning half earn below or above that wage. Dealers are dependent on tips for much of their income.

Dealers, waitresses and other employees who earn tips would receive the $1 per hour increase if the bill becomes law.

Following Monday's vote, reporters for both the Review-Journal and Nevada Appeal in Carson City were unable to find minimum wage earners when they tried to interview workers affected by the bill.

"We talked to them. They are out there," Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, said about a recent hearing in which minimum wage earners testified.

Brown is pleased reporters had a hard time finding minimum wage workers in Las Vegas.

"I think Las Vegas is the exception," he said. "Go to Reno, Laughlin and Mesquite, and you will find minimum wage workers. If it weren't for the unions in town here, they wouldn't be getting decent pay."

Shabi said surveys show about 1 million Nevada workers -- the bottom 10 percent of the workforce -- are paid $6.95 per hour or less.

That hourly figure is supposed to include tip income, but he doubts all employees include that calculation in submitting semi-annual reports to the state.

The average worker in Nevada earned $16.50 per hour in 2004.

Shabi's office keeps detailed information about wages earned by many classes of workers in Nevada.

Jobs like janitors, maids and dishwashers traditionally have been considered low-paying positions.

But maids in Nevada earn a mean wage of $10.40 per hour, dishwashers, $8.88 per hour; and janitors, $10.18 per hour. Shabi said their wages are higher than in other places because many are union workers in Las Vegas.

Other low-paid occupations are fast food cooks, $6.47 per hour; waiters and waitresses, $7.05 per hour; entertainment (amusement park) attendants, $6.86 per hour and retail sales workers, $9.02 per hour.