St. Cloud Costco Raises Minimum Wage to $16 per Hour

The government says raise minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next 4 years.  Costco comes back and says "we'll raise our minimum wage to $16 now".  So, how do you like those apples?

And here is another kicker that makes Costco a great place to work... only about 20% of all of their employees, which is about 180,000 nationwide, makes minimum wage.  The average wage for an hourly employee is $24 an hour.  That's not going to make you rich, but it is definitely a living wage.

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Costco has also been giving employees a $2 bump in pay as hazard pay during the pandemic.  This will actually end, but with the raise in minimum wage, this could make some of the employees that were receiving the hazard pay able to receive that as their normal pay as a permanent increase.

This pay increase puts some of their major competitors in the "hot seat".  This includes Target, Amazon (which is probably their biggest competitor), WalMart, and Best Buy.  Those places have said that they have some bonus incentives as of recent, but maybe this will also kick start some of those place to raise their hourly wages as well.

Not everyone is on board with the government dictating what the minimum wage should be, either.

Matthew Shay, president of the National Retail Federation, a lobbying group for retailers, said on a call with reporters that "it doesn't make sense for the federal government to be in the business of dictating wages in an economy as broad and diverse in scope as this one is...It's best to let market conditions dictate" wages.

This issue can be debated all day, but this is what Costco is doing and I'm all for it!