In The Arena I Tried to Live on Minimum Wage for a Week

Former Gov. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) is president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund and counselor to the Center for American Progress.

For all of last week, I worked hard to live on the budget of a minimum wage worker. That meant I had $77 to spend on food, transportation, activities and other personal expenses for the week. I didn’t make it.

Most mornings started with eggs and toast, bought last Sunday during a grocery trip costing more than $15. Lunches were normally leftovers, macaroni and cheese or McDonald’s. There were no big dinners or coffee stops on a whim. But the challenges were beyond food.


Wednesday morning, I had a meeting about a mile from my apartment, but in the opposite direction of my office. I would normally take a cab, but this time, I took off my jacket and walked the mile in 90-degree heat, then walked back almost 2 miles to my office. Walking made me late to my meeting, but a minimum wage budget doesn’t allow for extra transportation costs, making it my only option.

And early in the week when I actually caught a cold, I felt lucky to already have medicine at home that would help with the symptoms. Medicine, along with any other unexpected or additional expenses, often prevents the budget from stretching as far as it needs to stretch. That was a lesson I learned when my budget ran out on Thursday evening.

These are just some of the small realities I have learned about life on the minimum wage.

Washington is in a bubble that keeps our representatives away from the experiences of those they actually represent. We need to understand the challenges faced by Americans who are being left behind in our economy. That’s why I joined members of Congress and dozens of organizations in taking the Live the Wage challenge (www.LivetheWage.com), and asking those in Congress to actually try living on the minimum wage for a week before opposing an increase that would help millions of Americans who currently live in poverty.

For the week, I walked as much as I possibly could to avoid paying for transportation, skipped meals to save money — and I ate much smaller and less healthful meals when I did eat. Because fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to find at a price within a minimum wage budget, I turned to bread, peanut butter, bananas and bologna more than anything else. That was what I could find when I took this budget to the grocery story last Sunday. And that’s why I ate lunch from the McDonald’s dollar menu.

Thankfully, I did this by myself. For millions of Americans, a minimum wage salary has to cover an entire family. Right now, in America, a minimum wage worker is spending her workday worrying about a decision she is going to have to make when she finally makes it home. Will it be electricity or diapers this week? Medicine or gas?

It has been five years since the federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25. While some cities and states have acted to raise their own minimum wages, many have stood still, content to let their workers effectively make less and less each year. When the federal minimum wage was increased in July 2009, gas averaged $2.45 per gallon. Today, it is $3.55, meaning filling a car with a 12-gallon tank would cost an extra $13.20. That might not sound like much, but it is close to two hours of work on a minimum wage salary. The same can be said for even more basic needs, like a gallon of milk, which is nearly 75 cents more per gallon than it was in July 2009.

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will increase the average annual salary of a minimum wage worker to $19,777, hardly a living wage, but a major step forward for the 30 million hardworking Americans who live in poverty while earning the minimum wage.

I have an apartment here in Washington and a good job. I know I’ll never be able to truly walk in the shoes of a minimum wage worker, but experiencing just some of the decisions this income requires on a daily basis is enough to understand that we need to do better for these hardworking families. It’s un-American that you can work and work and work and not get out of poverty. The promise of America is that working hard and playing by the rules will help you get ahead, but right now, we’re breaking that promise. It’s time to give America a raise.