Next week, Amazon workers will join with other New Yorkers to rally in support of new legislation that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $30/hr by 2030. NYC’s current minimum wage of $17/hr leaves one in five of the city’s residents living in poverty, while the cost of living only continues to skyrocket.
If passed, this legislation would be a historic win for working class people that could inspire similar campaigns across the country, lift hundreds of thousands of New York City residents out of poverty, and allow many workers to actually earn a living wage.
The MIT Living Wage Calculator defines a living wage as “the employment earnings…that a full-time worker requires to cover or support the costs of their family’s basic needs where they live.”
In other words, a living wage is what a worker needs to earn at a full-time job just to cover the basics where they live: food, childcare, health care, housing, transportation, other needs like household goods, personal care items, and internet. Nothing fancy. Just the basics.
Living wage calculations also take into account family type: how many adults are in a household, how many work, and how many children are in a household. For example, in 2025 the living wage in NYC for a single adult with no children was $28.87/hr, and $65.20 for a single parent with two children.
Here’s how Amazon’s wages stack up against those numbers:
Clearly, neither the current minimum wage nor Amazon’s wages are enough for workers to make ends meet, but too often the call for a living wage is met with derision and criticism–as if working class people are asking for a unicorn instead of simply a wage that lets us eat and pay the rent at the same time.
Workers have been fighting for $30/hr for a long time. The introduction of this legislation is the culmination of years of organizing, with Amazon workers leading the charge. Amazon Labor Union-IBT1’s historic unionization effort in New York revolved around the unprecedented, bold demand for a $30/hr starting wage beginning in 2021. The call for $30/hr quickly spread nationally, with other Amazon workers’ groups joining the fight.
The first step in the fight for a living wage is knowing what a living wage really looks like–and you can find out exactly what it looks like for you through the MIT Living Wage Calculator.
In Solidarity,
The Labor Force
P.S. In the NYC area or know someone who is? RSVP to next week’s rally right here.
Sources:
https://livingwage.mit.edu/
https://www.instagram.com/p/DQxKoMUknt3/