According to a recent poll of North Carolina voters, employment is the most important issue facing the state right now. The Public Policy Polling results also suggest support for an increase to a $15 minimum wage.

Twenty-three percent of North Carolina voters said state elected leaders should focus more on wages and jobs. The August poll results show the issue has become more important to voters than other pressing matters like healthcare or education.

Tom Jensen is the director of Public Policy Polling. He said increased awareness of the importance of jobs stems from the worker shortage, which has left many jobs vacant.

“You just have to pay people more to get jobs filled,” Jensen said. “You have to have jobs filled to make everything run smoothly for everybody else who depends on workers for services and those sorts of things.”

Republicans and Democrats both said wages and jobs were important. Twenty-six percent of Democrats and 29 percent of Republicans ranked it as their top issue.

The poll responses also showed widespread support for an increase in the state minimum wage from the current $7.25 to $15/hour. Fifty-seven percent of voters said they would approve a wage increase and 40 percent opposed. Jensen said it is the most support he has seen for the measure.

“We’ve been polling on a $15 minimum wage in North Carolina for close to a decade now,” Jensen said. “We’re definitely seeing more support for that concept than we ever had before.”

Of those who either strongly supported or somewhat supported a $15 minimum wage, 83 percent were Democrats while 26 percent were Republican. The most support for a $15 minimum wage came from Black voters, according to the poll. Seventy-eight percent said they would approve increasing the minimum wage.

According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, which shows the hourly wage a person would need to earn to support themselves, a single adult with no children in North Carolina would need to earn $14.72/hour. In Orange County, the living wage is $15.40. The figure is based on average annual expenses for an individual in each state. North Carolina’s current minimum wage is the same as the federal rate, which was last increased by $0.70 in 2008.

North Carolina currently has bills in the State House of Representatives and Senate that would increase the minimum wage to $10.35/hour in 2022 and then to $15/hour in 2023.

 

Photo via NC Raise Up


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