Thanks to a tight labor market putting pressure on corporate America to fight to keep and hire quality employees, wages are finally rising for many Americans in lower income brackets.
The latest group of workers getting raises:Bank of America’s employees.
The bank said on Tuesday that it would hike its minimum wage for its 205,000 employees to $20 an hour over the course of the next two years. Effective immediately, its minimum wage will rise to $17.
“If you get a job at Bank of America, you’ll make $41,000,” CEO Brian Moynihan said on MSNBC on Tuesday.
Of course, only a fraction of Bank of America’s employees make its minimum wage. But hikes to the lowest wages paid by a business tend to push up wages higher up the ladder, which means that many employees already making more than the minimum could also get raises.
Moynihan described this as the bank sharing its success with lower-paid employees. But economists would say that the real reason the bank is not that its executives have been suddenly overcome with feelings of generosity but because of market competition for employees at a time of very low unemployment.
Not coincidentally, Moynihan announced the pay hike a day before he is scheduled to testify before the House Financial Service Committee, now chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters. Six other big bank chiefs will testify alongside him.
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