• Assembly Bill 1835 (Lieber) will increase the California minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.00 over two years. This will be accomplished in two steps; a seventy-five cent increase on January 1, 2007, followed by a fifty cent increase on January 1, 2008.
  
  
• A recent poll of likely voters in California revealed that 73% support raising the minimum wage to $7.75 over two years with annual indexing in the third year. This same poll also found that 72% of Republican women and 50% of Republican men support increasing the minimum wage to $7.75 with annual indexing.
  
  
• According to the California Budget Project, the majority of minimum wage workers are adult primary breadwinners in their families.
  
  
• An employee working full-time at the current minimum wage of $6.75 per hour would receive only $14,040 per year, from which social security and other taxes would be deducted.
  
  
• California's current minimum wage of $6.75 is currently a dollar and 23 cents below the federal poverty line for a family of three.
  
  
• According to a September 2005 report by the Center for Labor Research & Education at the University of California Berkeley, a dollar increase in the minimum wage in California would reduce the need for expenditures on public assistance programs, such as Medi-Cal and food stamps, and save taxpayers over $2 billion in reduced program costs.
  
  
• California’s minimum wage is currently behind Washington ($7.63), Oregon ($7.50), Connecticut ($7.40), Vermont ($7.25), Alaska ($7.15), Rhode Island ($7.10) and the District of Columbia ($7.00).
  
  
• California has the lowest minimum wage level of all the West Coast states, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. Both Washington and Oregon have minimum wage levels that are indexed to be adjusted without legislation or a ballot initiative.
  
  
• The increase of $1.25, or $2,600 per year ($30/week in 2007, and an additional $20/week in 2008), will allow workers to buy more:
  
  
  • 1.5 tanks of gas ($3.00 per gallon, 12 gallon tank)
    
  • 3.3 Months of Rent in a Studio Apartment ($780 per month)
    
  • 2.83 Months of Rent in a One-Bedroom Apartment ($918 per month)
    
  • 12.8 Months of Food for a Single Adult ($203 per month)
    
  • 5.25 Months of Food for Single-Parent Family ($495 per month)
    
    
• Employers will benefit from predictable annual wage increases. Historically, without indexing, the sporadic increases have been as much as 36% in a single year.