In the past several years, policy makers and unions—most notably the Service Employees International Union—have pushed for a raise in the minimum wage to $15 per hour. That effort has been realized in large part for employees in Pittsburgh’s healthcare industry—but has it made a difference for the affected workers?
The short answer is, yes.
On Dec. 5, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work released preliminary findings of the Pittsburgh Wage Study, which attempts to map the benefits of the recent wage increase for healthcare workers at a single Pittsburgh hospital.
Though lead author Jeffrey Shook said the report found workers still facing hardships, even after the initial wage increase, he was gratified to see those hardships decreased across all measures, some significantly. Among them:
•Fewer workers (79 percent vs. 87 percent pre-increase) reported living paycheck-to-paycheck;
•Fewer workers (38 percent vs. 53 percent) reported not being able to pay utilities on time;
•Fewer workers (23 percent vs. 36 percent) reported not being able to pay the rent or mortgage on time;
•Fewer workers (26 percent vs. 33 percent) reported not being able to afford car repairs, gas or insurance;
•Fewer workers (9 percent vs. 13 percent) reported not having enough food to eat, and;
•Fewer workers (35 percentvs. 40 percent) reported at least sometimes cutting a meal.
Additionally, in terms of dealing with the financial hardship of low wages, the study found a nearly 20 percent drop in the number of hospital workers who sought financial help from family and friends prior to the wage increase. It also found 11 percent fewer had to stay with relatives because they could not afford their own housing.
It also found reductions in the usage of payday loans, and food pantries following the wage increase. What effect the raises had on the usage of public benefits is something Shook said he plans to dive into deeper in future reports.
“We did this with funding from the provost’s office and still managed to do in-depth research with 50 workers and to administer a highly-structured survey to 235 more workers,” he said.
“Now we have a grant from the Heinz Endowments that will allow us to increase staff and do a bigger piece, plus some targeted looks at specific issues.”
For instance, Shook said that the study found six percent fewer workers used of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program as a strategy to navigate hardships after getting the wage increase.
But it did not look at whether the increase had made some no longer eligible. Nor did it look to see if wage increases had resulted in loss of eligibility for Customer Assistance Programs offered by utility companies to low-income households.
“That’s something we definitely want to look at,” said Shook. “Some people self-reported that they didn’t use public benefits—even if they qualified—as a matter of pride.”
In addition to a more detailed look at the public benefits issues, Shook said the next series of reports—which he hopes to have out in the summer—will look at more change over time, and measure they did not include in this report about general mental and emotional health issues such as the amount of control they feel they have over their lives.
“What we really want to do is expand our sample,” he said.
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