It’s Crazy Time at the US DOL – Pay Home Health Care Workers Less Than $7.25/hr

I thought Social Darwinism died out with the Nazis, but it looks like it’s made a comeback. From survival of the fittest to survival of the richest. There are 5 States (shocker-all Republican) that have no minimum wage; these States are forced to pay the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. So the current regime in D.C. is throwing another bone to the upper income Americans to distract from the Epstein files. Oh Brave New World! No wonder so many Americans are looking to leave. But more and more places don’t want Americans anymore. I guess will be stuck here and be forced to fix the problem in the midterms.

Are we going to be opening up another can of worms with this article? Isn’t the whole point a return to rugged individualism and the Gilded Age? Don’t get in the way of companies making their money. Isn’t that the point of influencers such as our VP espousing a return to family responsibility? If you’re rich enough you can hire a full-time nanny and nurse, otherwise make grandma provide childcare, and let the kids provide grandma-care, and of course the little wife is in the home where she belongs home-schooling everybody while dad makes an astounding wage doing big manly jobs that don’t require a college degree. (Because AI will be doing all the work requiring a brain.) Either we air-out the dirty linen of what’s going on in this administration, or just stick to discussing amenities and all the clubs we could belong to in our wonderful new senior community.

And since I don’t have $30 million for a settlement, I’m sure I’ll soon see the light, have a change of heart, and go on the record as praising all the patriots working tirelessly in our government to make all of our lives better. “God bless us, every one,” prayed Tiny Tim.

I've worked in industries where OSHA rules and relatively generous state minimum wage laws have been the life preservers of factory employees.

Do we need new tragedies that rival the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, to remind us that safety standards are there for a reason?

Do we need more working-homeless to remind us that there's something wrong with an economic system that ridiculously rewards members of the C-Suite while ridiculously under-compensating those doing the actual work?

During my early twenties, someone told me in life and in business, powerful people are motivated by three things: more money, more power and/or more sex. I found it to be largely true then, and increasingly so over the last twenty years.

Unfortunately, a large percentage of voters no longer shun would-be leaders who embrace this self-serving ideology. Instead they elect and idolize them, imagining that these crass, crude, vicious, unkind, unconscionably greedy people will somehow elevate these voters’ lives. No amount of evidence to the contrary seems to convince them.

I despair at the trajectory of our country

I live in Wisconsin where the minimum wage is $7.25 per hr. With the exception of waitresses who as far as I know always rely on tips I have never met anyone who makes as little as $7.25 per hr. The marketplace forces businesses here to pay more, in fact the vast majority of the well knowns pay $12.00 and up to start.

Author Terry Pratchett said “you have to make the lives of the poor just bearable enough that they don’t rise up and kill you.” This is why the military gets a blank check and the pentagon has never been required to pass an audit. Every aspiring dictator knows this. Treat your enforcers well if you want to survive. You’re only finished when the soldiers stop believing.

Hmmm... the "Teamsters" boss ( no right-winger to be sure ) doesn't seem to agree; he's liking what he sees, tariffs and all. What are we to make of that comrades ?

WTH, Rufus, a union leader would never support the changes to worker safety and minimum wage mentioned in the article, and O’Brien said he thinks tariffs will bring back manufacturing. We’ll see. And human jobs, not robot jobs. I kinda feel sorry for him, the breakup will be uglier than the Musk one.

Rufus
$12.00 an hour translates to $480 a week before taxes. Could you support a family on that? Then take away Medicaid and food assistance, Planned Parenthood, HeadStart, and numerous other programs that help the Working Poor. SHAME!!

According to the Hospital & Healthcare Compensation Service in 2023 the average longterm care CEO was paid $555,340. The report says it covers “executive compensation of larger-revenue assisted living communities, independent living facilities, continuing care retirement communities and nursing homes, as well as top executives over multi-site organizations.” The median pay for a home healthcare aide was $34,900 in 2024 and a nursing assistant was $ $39,430. Maybe the healthcare worker makes up for the poverty wage through a year end bonus, a retention bonus, stock options or a golden parachute.

In 2024 Medicare attempted to put minimum staffing requirements on nursing homes which the industry opposed saying it would be too costly and cause closures. Between 2018 and 2024 three care providers paid $650 million in stock buybacks, dividends and bonuses to executives.

A list of regulations the Department of Labor considers obsolete, unnecessary, costly, burdensome, overreaching. https://production-tcf.imgix.net/app/uploads/2025/07/21152320/Trumps-Department-of-Labor-Continues-Its-Onslaught-against-Workers-Appendix.pdf

The Trump appointed chief attorney for the Department of Labor that enforces workplace laws authored the Project 2025 chapter on the DOL.

The minimum wage hasn’t change in 16 years and its peak value was in 1968 when it was worth $15.09 in 2025 dollars.

During the 2024 campaign Trump said "I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I shouldn't say this, but I'd get other people in. I wouldn't pay.”

In 2024, CEO pay at S&P 500 companies increased 7% from the previous year—to an average of $18.9 million in total compensation. Meanwhile, the median U.S. worker made just $49,500, a 3 percent bump over the previous year.

In 2024, the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio for S&P 500 companies was 285-to-1.

Staci, what $12.00 an hour translates to wasn't the point. The point was people here in Wisconsin where the min/wage is $7.25 actually start at a much higher wage than the minimum. I can go anywhere within 25 miles of my home and START at $12 - $15 an hour. To START is just the beginning; with a good work ethic raises will and do follow. Where was all this sort of concern when the previous Democrat administrations eliminated thousands of coal miners jobs and just told the miners to go learn how to work a computer related job?

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/topics/silicosis.html
See my post above. 15$ doesn’t do much better. Could you raise a family on that? You didn’t answer my question.
We need to compete with the rest of the world and not go back to the early 1900s. Sorry if America doesn’t look like you want it to.
Sorry if your America looks

Rufus
In 2015 Obama initiated a program that made $38 million in grants available to communities affected by the loss of coal mining jobs. Hilary Clinton did say "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." but she added "We're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people," "Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.” That part of her statement is conveniently forgotten
or not reported by those pushing the war on coal agenda baloney. Her $30 billion plan would have payed for job training small business development and infrastructure investments while protecting miner’s healthcare and pensions.

Last April Biden announced that $475 million from the infrastructure act would finance solar, geothermal, microgrids and pumped-storage hydropower at current and former mine sites with a goal of creating up to 3,000 construction and operations jobs. In October 2024 an additional $428 million was obligated for 14 projects to produce clean energy in 15 coal communities. How many of those projects disappear under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and how will Republicans help those affected? How will Republicans help the 840,000 people expected to lose their jobs due to the cuts to clean energy in the OBBBA ? How will they make up for the extra $140 billion in additional energy costs we all will pay due to cutting cheap renewable energy?

During the first Trump Administration Coal production declined 26.5%, and coal-mining jobs dropped by 25% or 12,700 jobs. Maybe you can provide what assistance Trump provided to those miners. Currently he has decimated the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, the federal institute that protects miners from black lung, and paused enforcement of a new safety rule that would lower the level of silica dust in the mines. He placed 800 NIOSH employees on administrative leave including those in the West Virginia respiratory health division that provides X ray screening for black lung.

Democrats didn’t eliminate coal jobs, the market did. Cheaper and cleaner natural gas and renewable energy is what doomed coal. Do you want the market to rule or are you interested in a Stalinist top down operation with unworkable 5 year plans to keep a tax payer subsidized dying industry alive as done in the USSR? Which is it comrade?

Staci, you did not read all of my post apparently. I said $12 - $15 per hr jobs have always been meant to be entry level after which raises follow if the worker is worth a raise. As far as raising a family goes, if both adults are working at $15 per hour that's $60,000 a year, more with overtime. Wait to have kids for a few years. My wife and I are currently living on $52,000 a year and doing fine after having raised 2 girls who are doing even better. Can you raise a family on $60.000? Yep. Just don't buy them everything they beg for. Exercise a Little courage and discipline. Our girls and their families are thriving mentally, physically, spiritually and financially. P.S. They paid their own way through college. Now for you Mike, very little of what you've heard about what Obama and Biden supposedly initiated was never actually done. The money, if ever appropriated at all was diverted to their pals. If you ever pay attention to the real news you'd know that. If the coal miners were so well taken care of why did the Pennsylvania miners vote for President Trump last November? Why is the Dem party in the tank in terms of the polls? It's going to be a great 3.5 years for anyone willing to work and a very long period of time for you naysayers. Happy Trails!

I understand that this forum should be about retirement....but...Rufus needs to understand that there are many, many parts of the country where 60K per year for a family of 4 with both parents working is not even remotely doable.

After taxes, 60K per year yields about $3200 a month. 2-bedroom apartments here in my neck of the woods start at $1800 a month. Daycare costs range from $600 a month per kid and upwards. Food prices are still sky-high and most jobs require a healthy contribution towards health insurance for those fortunate enough to have it.

Do the math above....it's ugly. "Courage and discipline" cannot overcome mathematics.

Political partisanship BS from BOTH parties over the last 40 years have gotten us here. There is plenty of blame to go around...but the main idea of this article about allowing home health workers to be paid less than minimum wage is truly the most insanely stoopid policy change that I have seen from the current administration.

I hope what you believe is true, Rufus, that the next 3.5 years are going to be great for anyone willing to work. But as the article explained, workers rights and protections are being chipped away, and a good work ethic isn’t enough to sway the people concentrating only on their bottom line. This doesn't even figure in the AI threat to jobs waiting in the wings. Average home and car prices are exactly 10 times what we originally paid when starting out in life in the early 70’s, yet wages haven’t even come close to keeping up. Our family is sitting pretty (for now) in retirement only because of our lucky start and working like dogs to stash away cash with no major hardships along the way.

It’s a shame we only have two choices in America and have to spend our time defending our choice, then explaining and apologizing for their action/inaction. It seems as useful as me railing against the weather every day.

Should have mentioned we were lucky enough that one was a good UNION job that offered a decent wage, safety protections, healthcare, job security and a pension—all being eliminated in today’s workplace with the government’s help.

For some reason you all refuse to see what I am saying, regardless of the minimum wage in any given area of the country the starting pay in the lower paying jobs is always higher than that minimum wage. I know it's more expensive in California. Their minimum wage is now $16.50 per hr. I know prices have gone up but we're ( at least I thought ) talking minimum wage and how effective the hikes are or aren't. The market will determine the wage, like it or not. Studies over the years have shown over and over again that raising the minimum wage, if it is raised to a higher point than what was being paid, results in workers being let go and now the remaining workers have to do more work to cover for the workers that were lost. I'm not against people being paid more money. I'm against living in la la land thinking minimum wage hikes are the answer. There are lots of reasons younger folks are struggling and many of those reasons are their own fault. Examples? How about the huge trucks and Suv's they all seem to feel like they need? How about thousands of dollars spent on tattoos for crying out loud? When my wife and I bought our first home it was a 90 year old 2 bedroom starter which we stayed in ( 10 yrs. ) 'till we could afford better. Kids now want to start out in houses that are nicer than we've ever had etc.etc. I could go on and on but hopefully somebody gets the point. It's not always somebody else's fault. Now for Dan, I did not say 60k was enough for a family of 4. I said it was sufficient for a young couple starting out who should wisely wait a few years before having kids after which they will have enjoyed several raises. It's all about choices. Finally, what can we expect other than perceived failure when we pay far far more attention to pro sports than politics as a nation? If we payed half as much attention to politics as we do pro sports one of the things we'd realize is that a lot of the articles we read are flat out lies. Happy Trails!

Rufus, I gave my kid the same speech—you want a house, stop frittering away your money on Starbucks. Then we sat down and ran the numbers extrapolating our starting out situation 50 years ago and comparing to hers now. She was right, we were way luckier, and other than the random Starbucks, she is frugal. But that is just our little study. Now they’re telling boomers to give the kids the downpayment or co-sign the home loan so they can compete in today’s market. But that’s an article for another day.

This has been a good discussion with opposing views, and people have been friendly. Thanks for that in these polarized times. But since all viewpoints have been expressed and no one appears to be changing their minds, we are closing discussion. Thanks to everyone who has participated and shared their views. Meanwhile, I wish we could get this level of participation on our articles on aspects that relate more clearly to retirement!