Virginia has the lowest rate of low-wage workers in the South
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Just 21.6% of Virginia workers earn less than $17 an hour, per new data from Oxfam, a global income equality advocacy nonprofit.
Why it matters: Virginia has a lower rate than then the national average — and the lowest rate in the South — of workers earning less than $17 an hour.
- Plus, the state has significantly fewer low-wage workers than it did just two years ago.
State of play: Oxfam revised its definition of a low-wage worker this year, from those earning less than $15 an hour to those earning less than $17, Axios' Emily Peck reports.
- Today, 23.2% of U.S. workers falls into the low-wage worker category, per Oxfam. In 2022, 31.9% of workers earned less than $15 an hour.
- In Virginia, 32.8% of workers who made less than $15 an hour in 2022.
The big picture: Wages are higher now in part because of inflation, and a strong labor market where lower-wage employees are still in high demand. But it's also due to the work of advocates who pushed for minimum wage increases for more than a decade.
- Plus: Pandemic-era benefits helped these workers be more choosy about finding better-paying jobs coming out of the record unemployment of 2020.
- And Virginia's minimum wage has gradually gone up since 2020; it's $12 an hour today versus $7.25 four years ago.
Yes, but: Wage disparities persist for women and people of color.
- 30%-31% of Black and Latino workers in Virginia make less than $17 an hour compared to 19% of white Virginia workers.
- And 26% of women make under $17 an hour versus 17% of men.
Worth noting: 863,589 of low-wage Virginia workers are adults 20 and older compared to 126,164 teens.