In 2023, the Seattle minimum wage will be adjusted to $18.69/hour for most workers, accounting for inflation.

Coco works at Popeyes in White Center. She shares what the adjustment will mean for her:

“I just turned 18. I work at Popeyes in White Center. For the past few years, I’ve been homeless. I’ve been couch surfing and I’ve had to figure things out on my own without my parents. 

I started working right when I turned 16. Back then, I used to work at Chipotle. I got paid $18.50/hour, but because I was a minor I could only work 3 hours a day. It wasn’t enough hours to make ends meet. And new workers would come in, and I’d get my hours cut. The money just wasn’t enough. Getting only $300 every two weeks was nowhere near enough to support myself and save anything. 

When I turned 17, I quit my Chipotle job and started working at Popeyes. Now I get paid $17.27/hour, the Seattle minimum wage. I get more hours, but I’m still a student. I somehow have to go to school and also work. I can barely get work done between the two. And after school, I go to work in a horrible environment where I'm treated like less than a person.

I’m still struggling to save. I need to pay for clothes, food, feminine hygiene products, wifi, water, my phone bill, and rent—I barely have enough to support myself. I’m in a messed up predicament where I’m working longer and harder, and still only making $300/week. You try surviving in Seattle on so little! To have a decent place to live, you have to work 2-3 jobs. 

It’s really hard to simply afford food. It’s like $8 for just a bag of cereal. I’m spending $3-4 dollars on water. It’s ridiculous. And sales tax makes things even more expensive. Quality food for my body is out of reach. It’s awful. 

Raising the minimum wage will be a blessing. I put so much work and time into just scraping by. Next year, I’ll be graduated. The Seattle minimum wage going up will mean I can cover more expenses and save more. It will really help me out. 

But I’m still concerned that it won’t be enough. Honestly, we need more than that. There’s no reason I should have to work multiple jobs to keep a safe place to live. We need more. A lot of things need to be fixed — we need higher paying jobs, lower sales taxes, and lower rents. So many people are struggling like me, and there’s plenty of money in this city. There’s simply no reason we should be living in poverty with all this wealth.

People who say the minimum wage shouldn’t go up are out of their mind. This idea that raising wages will hurt small businesses is backwards: My cousin’s grandma owns a small business, a meat shop. I know it’s been tough for her, especially with COVID and meat becoming more expensive. But raising the minimum wage will help everyone. She’ll have more customers at her store, because the rest of us will have more money to spend at her store. And we’ll have more money to survive. How could raising wages be a problem for her or for me?”