Nearly one-quarter of McDonald's workers make less than $10 an hour, according to a new survey

According to new data released by the Economic Policy Institute, McDonald's workers have some of the lowest wages in the fast-food industry.

The Wage Tracker project found that 23% of McDonald's workers make less than $10 per hour. The think tank says that it surveyed over 20,000 workers at 66 chains across the US, with an average of 317 respondents per chain.

A wage of $10 per hour works out to a salary of $20,000 a year for someone who works 40 hours a week.

The number of workers making less than $10 an hour was higher at McDonald's than at any of its competitors. In comparison, 18% of workers at Burger King make less than $10. McDonald's has more workers in the US than these competitors.

McDonald's disputes the results, it told Insider. McDonald's increased wages by an average of 10% in May 2021, with plans to increase the average hourly wage to $15 by 2024, the chain said. The changes only applied to 5% of Mcdonald's workers.

Fast-food workers have had more leverage in the past year as businesses struggled to retain and hire employees, and many workers saw this as a chance to demand higher wages and better benefits. Over the last year, restaurants have to compete for workers with sign-on bonuses and other perks because they couldn't keep locations staffed at pre-pandemic levels. The labor shortage in many sectors of the economy is a boon to some dissatisfied retail workers who are suddenly able to shop around for new jobs.

Workers received some concessions, like Starbucks commitment to raise its average wage to $17 an hour by summer 2022, and the hike in the average wage to $15 per hour at burrito joint, Chipotle. Some workers did not benefit from the raises. In 2009, the minimum wage was raised to $7.25. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, 392,000 workers earned the federal minimum wage in 2019.

Fast-food workers with lower wages have less purchasing power because of rapid inflation, which hit a 41-year high in March.

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