Workers

One Fair Wage - While the national median individual income in the United States is $40,480, tipped restaurant workers median individual income is just 37 percent of the national median income, at only $15,198.9,10 High earning tipped restaurant workers are nearly nonexistent, and over 95 percent of these workers earn less than $53,000 a year.11 The annual income of tipped restaurant workers is so low that 46 percent of tipped restaurant workers do not even earn $13,850 — the income threshold for a single individual to pay federal income taxes.12 On top of this 46 percent, One Fair Wage found that of workers making above $13,850 a year, approximately 38 percent — or 20 percent of all tipped restaurant workers — are in households that do not pay income taxes because their combined income is too low.13,14 This means that 66 percent of tipped restaurant workers would see no benefit from ending income taxes on tips. When tipped workers’ wages are too low to benefit from a tax exemption, the only real solution to their current affordability crisis is to raise the minimum wage and end the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers.