After Senators Patty Murray and Bernie Sanders published an editorial in The Seattle Times announcing they will introduce legislation that would impose a $15 national minimum wage, I felt compelled to address some of their most inaccurate and misleading claims.

My last blog post debunked the myth that today’s minimum wage workforce is comprised mostly of older workers who are working full time and “trying to survive on totally inadequate wages.”  The reality is the majority of minimum wage earners are in fact young, work part time, have never been married and live at home. 

But what about adults who do earn the minimum wage?  Do they fit the picture painted by minimum wage advocates like Senators Murray and Sanders of parents scraping by trying to support a family on meager minimum wage earnings?

Nope.  Even among the older minimum wage earners, the reality simply doesn’t fit the image perpetuated by minimum wage supporters.  A 2016 study by economists used Congressional Budget Office methodology and found just one in 10 workers who would be affected by a $12 minimum wage are single parents with children.  A majority of those who would be affected (60%) are either second or third-earners in households where the average family income is more than $50,000 per year.

• 41% live with family or relative
• 20% married dual earner
• 21% single adult
• 9% married sole earner
• 9% single parent

So just 18% of minimum wage earners are the sole source of income for their family, with only half of those being single parents dependent upon minimum wage earnings to support their children.

The findings from an earlier study reinforce that few adult minimum wage workers are supporting families.  And those who do have families also have substantial income from spousal employment.

• In 94% of families with adults who earn minimum wage, the spouse works as well.
• In 80% of those families with children, minimum wage earnings account for less than 20% of the household income.

Among adults with children who worked part time at a minimum wage job, the study found:

• Nearly half had a spouse that earned more than $40,000 a year;
• Another 16% had a spouse earning between $30,000 and $40,000 a year;
• 12% had a spouse earning between $20,000 and $30,000 each year.

Looking at it a different way:

• In more than 75% of families with children present, earnings from a minimum wage job account for less than 20% of total family income;
• In less than 5% of families with children present do minimum wage earnings account for more than 70% of family income.

The numbers aren’t too different for minimum wage earners who aren’t supporting children:

• In 67% of households with a minimum wage earner with no children, earnings from the minimum wage job account for less than 20% of total household income;
• In only 10% of households do minimum wage earnings account for more than 70% of total income.

In other words, the vast majority of adult minimum wage earners, with or without children, are supplementing the income of a higher-earning spouse.  Just a small minority of adult minimum wage earners are the primary breadwinner in their household.  Statistically speaking, a family that relies solely on minimum wage earnings is relatively rare.

The hue and cry for the minimum wage movement is the image of a family trying to survive on minimum wage earnings. The claim is a higher minimum wage will help these struggling parents.  But as the data clearly shows, increasing the minimum wage ends up helping many, many more workers who aren’t struggling to support a family at all.