Half of the eight battleground states in this year’s U.S. presidential election use the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a rate that hasn’t changed since 2009 despite a 47% surge in the cost of living since then. In essence, that means minimum-wage workers in those states have seen much of their purchasing power vaporized by inflation over the past 15 years. 

Donald Trump’s October 20 visit to a McDonald’s location in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, where the former president served food to pre-selected supporters, has renewed public attention on how much low-income workers earn. Asked by CBS News reporter Olivia Rinaldi if he thought the minimum wage should be raised after spending time behind the counter at the fast-food restaurant, Trump sidestepped the question. 

“Well, I think this. I think these people work hard. They’re great,” he said. “And I just saw something a process. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing to see. These are great franchises and produce a lot of jobs, and it’s good and great people working here too.”

Trump’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the former president’s views on the minimum wage. 

Vice President Kamala Harris has stated that she wants to raise the nation’s minimum wage, as well as the sub-minimum wage that is earned by tipped workers. Both Trump and Harris have proposed eliminating income taxes on tips as a way to boost earnings for people in the hospitality industry. 

While the federal minimum wage has been frozen since 2009, 30 states have stepped in to boost wages for their lowest-earning workers, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That’s left 20 states still paying the federal baseline wage, representing annual earnings of $15,000. Those states are mostly in the South and Midwest, including the four battleground states that use the $7.25 an hour minimum: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

Experts note tha workers in these locations are at risk of falling behind people who reside in states providing a higher pay floor.

“It’s ridiculous that Pennsylvania has a lower minimum wage than its neighbors as well as states like Arkansas, Florida and Nebraska, where voters had a chance to pass raises through ballot initiatives,” Holly Sklar, CEO of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a group that advocates for higher pay, told CBS MoneyWatch.

Earning $7.25 an hour “is a poverty wage, and it’s bad for business as well as workers,” Sklar added.

The minimum wage versus inflation

The renewed focus on worker pay comes amid polling that shows many people continuing to struggle financially even as inflation fades and the job market continues to click. 

A majority of Americans say they feel worse off than four years ago, according to Gallup, a pessimism that could sway their decisions in the November 5 election. And 6 in 10 voters describe the U.S. economy as either “fairly bad” or “very bad,” according to CBS News polling. 

That is likely tied to elevated prices caused by the hottest inflation in 40 years, which outpaced wage growth during the pandemic. Yet since May 2023, the typical worker’s pay has outpaced inflation, boosting their purchasing power.

That isn’t the case for workers who earn the federal minimum wage because it isn’t indexed to inflation, a step that some states are now taking to ensure that people can keep up with the rising cost of living. If the federal minimum wage had been indexed for inflation, it would now stand at $10.61 per hour. 

The four other battleground states have lifted their hourly minimum wage to about that level, or even higher:

• Arizona: $14.35 an hour
• Michigan: $10.33 an hour
• Nebraska: $12 an hour
• Nevada: $12 an hour

“In our region, the minimum wage has gone up in surrounding states but not in Pennsylvania,” noted Keystone Research Center, a think tank for Pennsylvania-related issues, in a blog post. “Minimum-wage workers in Pennsylvania have also lost ground relative to workers in the middle of the wage distribution, that is, relative to the median wage.”

Tom Zawierucha, 58, a building services worker in New Jersey, wishes candidates would talk more about protecting older Americans from big medical bills.

Teresa Morton, 43, a freight dispatcher in Memphis, Tennessee, with two teenagers, wants to hear more about how elected officials would help working Americans saddled with unaffordable deductibles.

Yessica Gray, 28, a customer support representative in Wisconsin, craves relief from high drug prices and medical bills that have driven her and her husband deep into debt. “How much are we going to pay?” she said. “It’s just something that’s always on my mind.”

Health care hasn’t figured prominently in this increasingly acrimonious presidential campaign. And the economy has generally topped the list of voters’ concerns.

But Americans remain intensely worried about paying for medical care, national surveys show. 

Two in 3 U.S. adults in a recent nationwide poll by West Health and Gallup said they’re concerned a major health event would land them in debt. A similar share said health care isn’t getting enough attention in the campaign.

To better understand voters’ health care concerns as the 2024 campaign nears an end, KFF Health News worked with research firm PerryUndem to convene a pair of focus groups last week with 16 people from across the country. PerryUndem is a nonpartisan firm based in Washington, D.C., that studies public views on health care and other issues.

The focus group participants represented a broad swath of the electorate, with some favoring Republican candidates, and others Democrats. But nearly all shared a common complaint: Neither presidential candidate has talked enough about how they’d help people struggling to pay for medical care.

“You don’t really hear anything much about health care costs,” said Bob Groegler, 46, who works in residential financing in eastern Pennsylvania. Groegler said he’s worried he may never be able to retire because he won’t have enough money to pay his medical bills.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, hasn’t offered a detailed health care agenda, though he criticizes current laws and said he has “concepts of a plan” to improve the 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has laid out more detailed health care proposals, including building on legislation signed by President Joe Biden to lower patients’ bills. 

In 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which limits how much Medicare enrollees must pay out-of-pocket for prescription drugs, including a $35 monthly cap on insulin. The legislation also provides additional federal aid to help Americans buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, though this aid will expire unless Congress and the president renew it next year.

Harris has said she will expand the aid and push for new assistance to Medicare enrollees who need home care. She also has pledged to continue federal efforts to relieve medical debt, a nationwide problem that burdens about 100 million people. 

But most of the focus group participants said they knew little about these proposals, complaining that hot-button issues like abortion have dominated the campaign.

Many also expressed deep skepticism that either Harris or Trump would do much to lighten the burden of medical bills.

“I believe they’re out of touch with our reality,” said Renata Bobakova, 46, a teacher and mother outside Cleveland. “We never know when we’ll get sick. We never know when we’ll fall down or sprain an ankle. And prices really can be astronomical. … I’m constantly worried about that.”

Bobakova, who is from Slovakia, said she went back to Europe to give birth to her daughter 10 years ago to avoid crippling medical debt she knew she’d incur in this country. Parents with private health coverage face on average more than $3,000 in medical bills related to a pregnancy and childbirth that aren’t covered by insurance.

Other focus group participants said they or people they knew had left the country to get cheaper prescription drugs. The U.S. has the highest medical prices in the world, research shows.

Several focus group participants, such as Kevin Gaudette, 64, a retired semiconductor engineer in North Carolina, blamed large hospitals, drug companies, and insurers for blocking efforts to lower patients’ costs to protect their profits. “I think everybody has their finger in the pie,” Gaudette said. 

Martha Chapman, 64, who is also retired and lives in Philadelphia, pointed to what she called “corporate greed.” “I just don’t think it’s going to change,” she said.

In the closing days of the campaign, that cynicism represents a particular problem for Harris, said PerryUndem co-founder Michael Perry, who led the two focus groups. 

Harris has tried to distinguish herself as the candidate who is more serious about policy and more sympathetic to voters’ economic struggles, Perry said. And in recent weeks, she’s begun airing new ads highlighting health care issues.

But even focus group participants who said they lean Democratic seemed to blame both candidates for not addressing Americans’ health care concerns. “They’re not feeling listened to,” Perry said.

Many of the participants nevertheless continued to express hope that an issue as important as health care would someday get the attention of elected officials, regardless of political party. 

“We’re all human beings here. We’re all people just trying to make it,” said Zawierucha, the building services worker in New Jersey. “If we get sick or have to go in and get something done, we should have that peace of mind that we can go in there and not have to worry about paying it off for the next 20 years.”

“Just give us some peace of mind,” he said.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.