Ikea Portland Workers In Line for 18.5%/$1.75 an Hour "Living Wage" Increase to $11.17?

MIT has finally released an update to their "Living Wage" data; my prior post on this data is HERE--readers may recall that IKEA committed to using the local MIT data to set minimum wages for their workers. (I have yet to see any national news on plans to update IKEA worker minimum wages).

For a single person, the MIT data for Multnomah County now shows a "living wage" of $11.17 instead of the prior $9.42; that's an increase of 18.5% /$1.75 cents an hour.  All of the increase in the "Living Wage" results from updated data, including HUD fair market rent data used to estimate housing costs. 

(Note that HUD FMR rent data was only updated to 2014 (not 2015) from the previously used 2010 data. Also, MIT's reported minimum wage for Oregon continues to lag -the MIT data shows $8.95 when the current Oregon minimum wage is $9.25).


Oregon MIT "Living Wage" data can be found HERE; Multnomah County data is HERE.

 Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.