Next month will bring a minimum wage bump to workers in Silicon Valley, but it’s barely enough for these earners to survive in one of the most expensive places in the country.
Once a trailblazer in increasing minimum wage, San Jose now lags behind six cities in Santa Clara County, going up by just 40 cents from $17.55 an hour to $17.95 come Jan. 1. The county’s highest minimum wage is in Mountain View, which will jump to $19.20 in January, followed by Sunnyvale at $19.
Despite San Jose workers making a little more than the state’s minimum wage of $16.50 as of Jan. 1, the city’s lowest-income earners struggle to pay for necessities like food and rent.
For people like Savi Davi, an employee at 7-Eleven, it’s difficult to juggle mounting bills.
“It’s a good thing,” she told San José Spotlight. “ (But still) too hard, the payment for the rent, the car bills, the insurance, everything.”
Davi works full time at the 7-Eleven on the corner of East San Pedro and Third streets in downtown San Jose, opening the store at 6 a.m. five days a week. After taxes, she takes home about $15 an hour, or $600 a week. The increase will add another $16 to her weekly paycheck.
“I think it will help me pay my bills,” she said. But an ideal minimum wage for her would be $20 to $25 an hour, she said.
Scott’s Seafood, a couple blocks down on First Street, sits largely empty during the lunch hour. Owner Sammy Reyes said business has been down about 10% from last year. As a result, he’s had to make changes in the menu and slash employee hours.
“(The restaurant is) going to take a hit,” Reyes told San José Spotlight. “You got inflation going on and there’s only so much you can charge for items. In our case, we have to be smart. We have to sit down, analyze our menu and our costs.”
Wage increases are only one part of the equation, as the rise in cost of living and inflation are squeezing people’s pocketbooks.
Proposition 32 would’ve raised the state minimum wage immediately from $16 an hour to $17, and $18 an hour starting in January, but it failed to pass with a slim 50.8% voting no. Businesses with fewer than 25 people would’ve paid employees a minimum of $17 an hour next year and raised it to $18 in 2026.
“It’s disappointing. It’s too bad that the state minimum wage is so low,” Ruth Silver Taube, worker rights attorney and San José Spotlight columnist, told San José Spotlight. “It just really bothers me, those (cities) are very wealthy areas.”
Silver Taube pointed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, which provides estimates for the minimum hourly wage a full-time worker needs to support their family’s basic needs. In the San Jose metropolitan area, as of earlier this year, that’s about $32.87 for a single adult with no children, or roughly $68,379 annually. Last year, the calculator estimated single adults needed to make $26.20, or about $54,500 annually.
“(The minimum wage increase) isn’t a whole lot, but at least it is purportedly keeping up with the Consumer Price Index,” Silver-Taube said. “It isn’t going to make a huge dent, but any raise is helpful.”
Reporter Sakura Cannestra contributed to this story.
Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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