The minimum wage of $7.50 an hour is well below the living wage of $10.32 an hour in Bangor, Maine, and lawmakers at both the state and local levels are considering raising the base pay.
The living wage is the minimum income necessary for an individual to earn to meet his or her basic needs.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports $10.32 an hour is the lowest wage at which subsistence needs can be met by a single person with no dependents in Bangor, while the living wage is $22.07 an hour for an adult with a child.
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The minimum wage is the lowest amount of compensation an employee must receive while performing a specific job. An employee is entitled to whichever is higher among the applicable municipal, state, and federal minimum wage levels. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour,
according to the Department of Labor. The state of Maine last raised its minimum wage to $7.50 an hour in 2009,
according to villagesoup.com.
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Maine Gov. Paul LePage in 2013 vetoed a bill that would have increased the state’s minimum wage to $9 an hour by the start of 2015 while providing for annual increases tied to inflation,
the Bangor Daily News reported. The state’s legislators in June 2015 were again considering raising Maine’s minimum wage and the House passed a bill, which faces further action in the Senate,
WFVX reported.
Locally,
the Bangor Daily News reported City Councilor Joe Baldacci in February 2015 made public a proposal to raise the minimum wage in that city to $8.25 per hour effective Jan. 1, 2016, $9 an hour in 2017, and $9.75 an hour in 2018. Beginning in 2019, the minimum wage citywide under the proposal would rise annually to reflect the prior year’s consumer price index, the newspaper said.
Baldacci subsequently told the newspaper in May 2015 that he was delaying efforts to increase the minimum wage until after the city passed a 2016 budget, meaning the topic probably wouldn’t come up again until July 2015.
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