COLUMBUS – An annual look at how workers in Ohio are faring finds their paychecks were slightly higher in 2017 but the growth in pay is not as strong as it’s been in the past.
The new “State of Working Ohio” report issued over the Labor Day holiday weekend by the progressive-leaning think tank Policy Matters Ohio shows, while the unemployment rate of 5.0 percent is very low and employers are adding jobs, the state’s median wage grew two-percent in 2017, compared with three percent in the past few years.
“If we can’t create wage growth even when unemployment is this low, then there is something really fundamentally flawed structurally in our economy that requires a different set of policy solutions,” says executive director Amy Hanauer.
In 2017, the median wage was $17.79 cents an hour, a four-cent hourly increase from the year before.
The report also shows three of Ohio’s 10 most common jobs pay less than the official poverty line for a family of three.
And, while gender wage gap is narrowing, full-time female workers still earn about $6,500 dollars less than their male counterparts, Hanauer said.
She believes policy changes that would benefit Ohio workers include expanded paid family leave and a higher minimum wage while , at the federal level, she contends restored overtime protections could bring back stability to the work week for nearly 350,000 Ohioans.
“If you make more than 28-thousand dollars a year, you make too much to get any overtime at all and you can be forced to work 60 hours a week, 70 hours a week. Think of a manager at a Starbucks or a manager at a Burger King; we ought to restore overtime for those kinds of folks,” she said.