Indiana only requires employers to pay the lowest rate deemed acceptable by the federal government when it comes to minimum wage. The state's rate is $7.25 per hour, the same as the federal minimum, and is more than $2 below what is calculated as a living wage in Indiana.
Besides Indiana, there are 20 other states that have set their wage at the $7.25 rate. Twenty-nine other states, plus Washington, D.C., have set their state minimum wages above the federally mandated rate.
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In some states, like Arkansas and Maine, this rate is only 25 cents higher, but in a number of others, including California, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, the minimum wage is already set at $9 per hour or above. The District of Columbia currently commands the country's highest mandatory minimum wage with employers required to pay a minimum of $10.50 per hour.
Democratic lawmakers in Indiana recently tried to increase Indiana's minimum wage through the introduction of a Senate bill, but the bill did not make it out of the primarily Republican senate. The bill would have increased Indiana's minimum wage in increments to $10.10 per hour, which is the amount President Barack Obama has asked all states to increase their wages to. So far, however, only Hawaii, Connecticut, and Maryland have introduced legislation that puts this increase in place.
As such, the living wage in Indiana remains above the minimum wage in the Hoosier State. A minimum wage earner working full-time will only make $15,080 per year, while the minimum amount one needs to earn to pay basic living expenses is estimated to be $17,627,
according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's living wage calculator. This breaks down to an hourly amount of $9.74 per hour for a single adult or $20.36 per hour for an adult with one child.
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