(The Center Square) – Once ranked tops in the country for entry level wage growth over inflation, in 1935, Illinois has fallen to No. 39 compared to other states, according to BrilliantMaps.com.
Several southern states were among the biggest winners of increasing their entry level hourly wages since 1935, the report said. Many northern and western states barely saw their inflation adjusted starting wages improve over this time period.
“Illinois is perhaps the most interesting state,” the report said. “It had the highest entry level hourly wage in 1935 at $0.67/hour, but by 2024 its starting hourly wage was 39th in the country at $14.06/hour.”
Illinois state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, worries how much more the state will be forced to pay for its long sputtering economy.
“Workforce drives population and drives people to a state,” Ford told The Center Square. “People travel to find high-paying jobs. And so, when you talk about equity and income, I think that if Illinois wants to increase its population we have to work with the federal government, increasing wages and at the same time be more business friendly so that people will actually have the ability to pay their employees more.”
Even with the state’s non-tipped minimum wage increasing to $15 an hour on Jan. 1, Ford said there is still more work to do if Illinois is to have any chance of curbing a trend that has seen it lose population in 10 of the past 11 years.
“You have a situation in Illinois where the cost of living is high and the actual wages are not keeping up,” he said. “People are driven out of the state. They have to go places where wages are comparable to Illinois but the cost of living is less. We could do more to cut some regulations for businesses and also support business needs so that they can hire more people or at least pay higher wages.”
Ford is also calling on the federal government to take on a bigger role in making sure more people are earning a livable wage.
“We should definitely be looking for the federal government to increase minimum wages so that they can bring some parity across the states,” he said. “I think if the federal government would do better by setting a higher minimum wage, that will help with this problem.”
Reason.org noted that economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis concluded in 2021, “A higher minimum wage can also result in employers using automation to replace more expensive human labor.”
Since 1935, BrilliantMaps.com shows South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas have all increased their average entry level hourly wages by 150% or more over and above inflation.
