Mississippi Movement: The Bottom Line?

April 21st, 2007 Posted by Mark

The actual definition of working poor, by the way, is that at least one person in the family has a job, but the family only makes $38,000 or less for a family of four, which would put them right at the poverty line. The reason that the Mississippi Economic Policy Center’s research findings are catching people’s attention in Mississippi is that the rate of the working poor in Mississippi— remember, 39 percent—is higher than the national average of 28.3 percent. Higher by quite a bit.

The Mississippi Economic Policy Center did not just say that the state should set up a new Mississippi minimum wage. The Mississippi Economic Policy Center research report’s authors also said that Mississippi would work on spending more money on education for adults to retrain them for higher paying jobs, and work through community colleges to provide this education and training programs for employees.

But the Mississippi Economic Policy Center report does say that a major way to correct this issue with the working poor in the state would be to increase the Mississippi minimum wage. It isn’t that the state of Mississippi has not tried to create a state minimum wage law. In the past few years, some law makers have tried to get just such a bill passed through the state legislature, but they have failed in a largely conservative state with firm roots in the ideal of keeping government out of business.

There was even once a bill considered in the Mississippi legislature that would have raised the Mississippi minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour, but that not go very far. Another attempt at it earlier this year—which would have created a Mississippi state minimum wage that would have followed the increases proposed in the federal minimum wage bills—passed in the House but did not pass in the Senate.

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