Overcoming Minimum Wage Southwest Virginia is a rough place to live for 18-year-old Aaron Webb.

After being kicked out of his home months after turning 18, Webb was forced to find a means to support himself completely in a matter of hours. Working as a waiter previously, Webb turned back to the restaurant business for full-time employment. Webb quickly discovered working a job that pays minimum wage was not enough to take care of the bills. Growing up gay in the middle of the Bible Belt was no easy task for Webb. Webb chose to live behind a charade of falsities in order to appease his mother, who had voiced her strong opinions on homosexuality his entire life. This all took a dramatic turn in January of 2014. As Webb and his secretive partner became more serious, he took it upon himself to come out to his family. Immediately, he was asked to leave his home, and told not to return. I was crushed. I mean, these people were supposed to love and support me through it all, said Webb. A million things were racing through my mind. Where was I going to sleep? How was I going to afford food or gas with my dwindling savings from last summer? Webb said a lot of things worked themselves out. He was able to stay with his best friends family for a while, until he could get back on his feet. He said what he didnt expect was the stack of bills piling up; working a 40-hour week was barely enough to cover them while making minimum wage. Because Im still in high school, Im only qualified to work minimum wage jobs. Even when Im allowed to work 40 hours a week, I can only make $290 max, and thats before taxes, said Webb. That sounds like a lot at first. After you pay rent, utilities, and insurance, buy groceries, and gas, theres nothing left over. Not even on a Ramen diet. Situations like Webbs are the driving force behind campaigns like NELP: the National Employment Law Project supporting a shift towards a living wage rather than a minimum wage. According to nelp.org, the shift in minimum wage has not echoed that of inflation. Their statistics show that over the past forty years, the value of national minimum wage has fallen over 30 percent. In the 2013 State of the Union address, President Barak Obama called for Congress to act on the low national minimum wage saying, Tonight, lets declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour.

According to The New York Times, the more the Obama Administration pushes, the more Congressional Republicans retaliate. This has caused the issue to fall to the states to decide. Recently, the Richmond Times Dispatch reported Va. State Senator Mark D. Obenshain is among these Republican retaliators. In his haste to provide facts that prove the harmful effects of a national minimum wage increase, Obenshain misinterpreted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In actuality, these statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tell us around 6.8 percent of Virginians make minimum wage or less. This figure is strikingly high. It ranks sixth among all states in the country. According to CBS, Lt. Governor Ralph Northam cast the deciding vote in a 20-20 tie to raise the minimum wage across the state recently. The proposed bill called for the minimum wage to be raised to $8.25 in 2014, then to $9.25 by the end of 2015. While this $2 raise seems miniscule in the grand scheme of things, for a full-time minimum-wage worker Michelle Davis the $80-a-week raise allows her family some comfort and flexibility. I know $80 doesnt sound like a lot, said the Marion, Virginia resident. but that money will help pay for new shoes and maybe even treating my girls to a movie in the theatre for the first time in their lives. For minimum-wage workers in Virginia like Webb and Davis, the increase of minimum wage to a living wage will make a world of difference.

High school senior, Aaron Webb welcomes the minimum wage increase that is soon to be enacted in Virginia. The $2 raise will allow him to afford to attend college.