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Charlotte NC

Minimum Wage Increase Would Help 32% of NC 12th District Workers

February 3, 2021

Adams pushes to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025

Charlotte – Today, Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, Ph.D. (NC-12) highlighted a new report that says that 32% of workers in North Carolina's 12th Congressional District (parts of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County) would benefit from proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025. The Economic Policy Institute reports that an estimated 146,000 workers would receive wage increases if the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 is passed by Congress and signed into law.

"A new report shows that almost a third of workers in our district would benefit from increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025," said Rep. Adams. "Every minimum wage worker knows you can't survive on $7.25, especially not during a pandemic. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by the year 2025 for 146,000 of our neighbors, including 80,000 working women. North Carolinians deserve a wage that reflects the value of their work, now more than ever."

Of those 146,000 workers, 80,000 are women and 66,000 are Black. 12th District workers benefiting from the legislation would see an average annual wage increase of 18% or approximately $4,200 in 2021 dollars.

Earlier this year, Adams and other Democratic leaders introduced the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, which would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025. As an original cosponsor of the bill, she is joined by Chairman Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (VA-03), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), and Rep. Stephanie Murphy (FL-07). Congress has not increased the federal minimum wage in over a decade, making this the longest stretch without an increase since the minimum wage was first established back in 1938.

In 2006, as a Member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Adams was able to successfully pass a one-dollar-an-hour increase in North Carolina's minimum wage, which lifted the wages of over 100,000 workers state-wide.

According to an independent analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, the Raise the Wage Act would increase wages for nearly 32 million Americans, including roughly a third of all Black workers and a quarter of all Latino workers. More than half of those who would benefit would be women.

Congresswoman Alma Adams represents North Carolina's 12th Congressional District (Charlotte, Mecklenburg County). She serves on the House Committee on Education and Labor, the House Agriculture Committee, and the House Financial Services Committee in the 117th Congress.

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