Your Big Mac Would Only Cost $.68 More If McDonalds Doubled Its Pay

If Mcdonald’s were to double the salaries and benefits of all of its employees, from the CEO down to the minimum wage cashiers, it would still only cost an extra 68 cents for a Big Mac, according to a new report.

As fast food workers across the country are going on strike to demand a livable wage, University of Kansas research assistant Arnobio Morelix tells the Huffington Post that it would cost the average consumer mere cents to give them just that.

Currently, a minimum wage Mcdonald’s employee makes $7.25 per hour. The CEO makes $8.75 million. But if the former were raised to $15 and the latter to $17.5 million, the dollar menu would only have to become the $1.17 menu and the Big Mac would go from $3.99 to $4.67, Morelix found. These numbers underscore what low-wage workers already know: It would take very little for Mcdonald’s to vastly improve the lives of those who make the company run. In fact, minimum wage raises have proven beneficial to a company’s bottom line.

Current wages for the lowest paid Mcdonald’s workers are unworkable, and even the company knows that; a recent budget released by Mcdonald’s told employees to get by getting a second job and spending $0 on heating. Still, the company’s leadership has tried to frame itself as a charitable “above minimum wage” employer.