The effort to raise the minimum wage has stalled in the U.S. Senate.
Both of New Hampshire's Senators have voted with the majority to put off a final vote until next week.
But a UNH study says thousands of workers in the state could benefit immediately from a minimum wage hike.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
Senators Judd Gregg and John Sununu voted with the majority to stop a move that would have forced a vote on raising the minimum wage.
Under the bill, the federal minimum wage would have climbed from 5.15 an hour to seven dollars and twenty-five cents.
In a statement, Senator Sununu says he voted for the delay so that his amendment to fund Women's Business Centers could be added to the bill.
The delayed vote means an estimated 4,000 full time workers in New Hampshire will go without a raise for a while longer.
The number of workers earning the minimum was determined by the Carsey Institute at UNH in a recent study.
Professor Ross Gittell oversaw the research and says many of the low wage earners are teenagers working their first job.
But he says a large percentage of them are adults..
..., they're working parents, and they're families with children who are finding it very difficult to support their families and provide the necessities with wages at the minimum or near the minimum.
The study found most low paid employees work in the retail field, social services, food establishments, and at hotels and motels.
It also found nearly fourteen percent of people working part time were making between five-fifteen and six sixty-five an hour.
Social service counselors around the state say they see quite a few part time workers, but that they tend to earn substantially more than the federal minimum wage.
They say a client's hourly wage is often seven, eight, or as much as ten dollars an hour.
At Concord's Welfare Department, Jackie Watmough says her clients may be making higher wages, but they've got only part time work.
So the weekly paychecks are the equivalent of working full time at the minimum wage.
if you're a young family, and you're only making a net of 200 or 250 a week and your rent is 900 you really have no wiggle room for any emergencies or hardly even the basic needs to feed your family and pay your child care and continue with transportation costs and your normal living expenses.
The stretch that part timers make to the pay the bills can be even tougher if there's only one parent.
And the single parent is typically the mother.
The Carsey Institute estimates there are about 48,000 low income families in the state, many headed by mothers.
Katherine Merrow of New Hampshire's Woman's Policy Institute says she's not surprised, since a study done for her group found women dominate the ranks of low wage jobs.
some of it is the industries that women have tended to, you know occupational choices by women. either because that's what they choose to do or that's what was available to them tend to be low wage industries. more so than the occupations that occupations than men have had open to them...
One woman in a low wage job in northern New Hampshire says she hasn't found many options for full time work in her part of the state.
Amanda Larrivee lives in Milan and is a 27 year old home health aid who usually works between 24 and 30 hours a week.
She earns a bit more than 8 dollars an hour and makes between 200 and 300 dollars a week.
Larrivee says that was ok until she broke up with her boyfriend.
Now Larrivee says she's got to pay household expenses by herself.
its definitely hard, its a struggle. that's for sure. i didn't think it was going to i didn't realize it was going to be this rough. .... there's never enough for food or gas. gas is quite a dip in your change purse that's for sure.
On the federal level, the effort to raise the minimum wage has already made its way through the House.
But in the senate, the wage hike may have to be laden with other initiatives like Senator Sununu's to pass.
In the meantime, if lawmakers in Washington don't soon raise the minimum wage, legislators in Concord are expected to take up the cause.
A bill in the legislature would raise the minimum wage in New Hampshire for the first time in a decade.
