SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA — -In downtown Sioux Falls, The Banquet provides community members free warm meals six days a week. These meals aren’t just for the unemployed or the homeless; many minimum wage workers come to feed themselves and their families in the cafeteria-style dining room.
Two weeks before South Dakotans vote on a proposal to increase the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50, low-wage workers eating at The Banquet told ThinkProgress that the additional $1.25 per hour will go a long way, especially given the state’s fairly low cost of living.
Miriam Holliday, a 29-year-old mother of three, said she usually brings her family to the Banquet twice a week in an attempt to stretch out her paycheck. Holliday recently started a job as a cook at Hardee’s. Although she was lucky to quickly earn a raise and no longer earns minimum wage, she said she has worked many minimum wage jobs with little room for growth.
“The minimum wage just wasn’t cutting it,” she said. “I had to use both my checks just to pay for rent, and that was really hard. I was like, ‘I have to wait a year for a quarter raise, are you serious?’” But Holliday said she would rather work low-wage jobs than rely on government assistance.
With $700 a month in rent and much of her income going toward paying off debt, Holliday said she and her husband struggle to provide for their six-month-old baby and two older children. As she works during the day and her husband at night, the two only see each other for around 30 minutes a day.
A Lakota Indian, Holliday grew up on the Cheyenne River Reservation in north central South Dakota and is proud of how she’s raising her family on her paycheck. “I know I see it rough now, but we have more than we’d have on the reservation,” she said. The last time she spent time on the reservation was when her older brother died from alcohol poisoning.
“I don’t have the greatest life, but I don’t want my kids to grow up the way I did,” she said.
Holliday said she has worked minimum wage jobs in many states across the country, but upward mobility is the most stagnant in South Dakota. Although the 3.3 percent unemployment rate in South Dakota is significantly below the federal level, a large number of South Dakotans work minimum wage jobs. A South Dakota Budget and Policy Project report found that 34,000 minimum wage earners would be directly affected by the wage increase, while 64,000 South Dakotans will likely get a raise because they currently make between $8.50 and $9.75.
Measure 18 would go into effect on January 1 and would also include an annual cost of living adjustment. Reynold Nesiba, an economics professor at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, has been advocating for the measure since it was proposed by the South Dakota Democratic Party last year.
“Even though we have low unemployment [in Sioux Falls], there’s very little upward pressure in terms of wage rates,” Nesiba said. “Rather than complaining about their current salary, South Dakotans just go and get another part-time job or two more part-time jobs to figure out how to make ends meet rather than organizing.”
While opposition groups like No More Mandates, which is a coalition of groups including the South Dakota Retailers Association and the South Dakota Farm Bureau, have argued a minimum wage increase would lead to fewer jobs, the same Budget and Policy Project report said the measure could cut around 300 jobs. Nesiba calls this number statistically insignificant.
“When we’re talking about a labor force of 337,000, losing 300 jobs is in the statistical error. It’s going to be undetectable,” he said.
Other minimum wage earners told ThinkProgress that they work multiple jobs in order to earn enough money. Larry Haas delivers the Argus Leader in the mornings and does temp work with Labor Ready later in the day.
“You can’t live on $7.25 an hour,” Haas said. “When I first went to Labor Ready, I didn’t have a car. They take out taxes, they take out child support, they take out gas to pay the driver to go to the job site to work. There was one night where I worked eight hours and only made $4.”
Voters in four states this election will decide whether to raise their state’s minimum wage. Arkansas is also poised to raise the rate to $8.50, although it would be phased in over three years. Alaska and Nebraska have similar measures on the ballot, while in Wisconsin, residents of 13 counties will vote on whether to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour.