The low-wage life

Jeremiah Green admits it isn't easy to get by on minimum wage.

The 25-year-old South Shore resident works the lunch rush five days a week at a Subway in the Loop. His paycheck, along with money from occasional construction and delivery jobs, goes to help his mother, his sister's children and the mother of his baby son, Tyler. There is not much left over after that, he says.

"Enough to get a bus card and maybe a meal that I can say I had on my own," he said. "Maybe one of those, it's my treat."

Green is part of the one-third of Chicago's workforce defined as "low-wage" workers. He makes the Illinois minimum wage-currently $8.25 an hour. In April he participated in the "Fight for 15" strike for higher pay.

But afterward, he said, he was uncertain about the effects of a hike.

"I saw the numbers for myself of this Subway," he said. "I did the math, and they would actually be losing money. They'd be going under if they paid us $15 an hour."

Green's internal struggle reflects the tensions policymakers have been debating all year. President Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour in his State of the Union address this year. Meanwhile, a bill in the House of Representatives would bring it to $10.10, although observers such as govtrack.us give it only a 3 percent chance of becoming law. In Illinois, Gov. Quinn has said he wants to raise the minimum wage to $10 over the next four years. State Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) introduced the legislation, but the bill is in limbo.

Lightford points to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, which opposes efforts to raise the mandatory wage, for part of the holdup.

The Chamber, which lobbies state government, files lawsuits and provides networking opportunities on behalf of business interests, has come out against Lightford's bill through an affiliated political action committee.

Minimum wage is meant as a stepping stone to higher-paying work, said Jay Shattuck, executive director for the Chamber's employment law council.

"The minimum wage was never intended to provide a living for a family," Shattuck said. "It's low-skilled, but an opportunity for people to move up or go find another job."

That's exactly what Green wants to do.

"I would hope I would have the drive to do that," he said. "That's been my goal." The owner of the Subway where he works, he said, started out on $4.25 an hour. Shattuck also said he earned minimum wage when he started working.

Fifty-seven percent of low-wage workers in Chicago are 30 or older, according to UIC's Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Lightford argues that some must support families on low wages.

"It's very difficult for a family of four to survive in these economic times on minimum wage," she said. "It's very expensive to have a two- [or] three-bedroom apartment."

Average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Chicago area is $966, according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. It would take 81 hours of minimum-wage work every week to afford that.

The federal minimum wage was implemented in 1938, guaranteeing at least 25 cents an hour for workers engaged in interstate commerce. It was expanded in 1966 to include just about everyone. By 1978, it was $2.65 an hour-that's $9.45 in 2013 dollars. Illinois' minimum wage is $8.25, and the federal wage is a dollar less than that. Since the minimum wage has not kept up with the Consumer Price Index, efforts to raise it usually include some provision linking the wage to inflation.

Even that can be controversial. The two political camps both make economic arguments: Either raising wages cuts into businesses' overhead, forcing them to hire fewer people or cut hours and benefits, or higher wages give employees more money to spend, boosting companies' profits and bolstering the local economy.

Economic experts don't have a consistent answer. A recent poll affiliated with the University of Chicago asked economists if they thought raising the federal minimum to $9 an hour would make it harder for low-skilled workers to get jobs. They were split: 34 percent agreed, 32 percent disagreed and 24 percent were uncertain.

The issue has been studied for decades, and results still are contradictory. Recent studies of the literature don't find much effect on employment when the minimum wage is raised. But that doesn't account for other potential effects, such as shortened hours or higher prices. Economists even disagree about whether raising the minimum has any effect on the poverty rate, that is, the number of people who make less than the federally defined poverty threshold.

In the meantime, Lightford said she plans to continue lobbying for a wage increase.

"The businesses will actually see more profits" if wages are raised, she said. "[People] want to spend more because they have more."

Shattuck said the Chamber would continue to oppose the increase.

"Both sides of the aisle are looking concerned about [Illinois'] higher unemployment rate compared to the rest of the country. We're still hovering over that 9 percent," he said. "I think from the Illinois Chamber's perspective, we'd like to see more progress."

mcrepeau@tribune.com