(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) said on Wednesday it had raised its U.S. minimum hourly wage to $21, as it works to keep its promise of increasing the pay to $25 an hour by 2025.
Bank of America in May disclosed plans to raise its minimum wages for its U.S. employees, joining a clutch of firms that have pledged to pay employees more after a year of pandemic risks and government subsidies fueled conversations on whether companies pay their workers enough.
The $25 figure is higher than at competitors, and the second-largest U.S. bank has also asked its vendors to set a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
In the last four years, Bank of America raised the minimum hourly wage to $20 from $15.
Companies have sometimes been prodded to boost wages by employee complaints that spill into the public sphere. But there are also political pressures and a competitive reality in which one big company outlines a higher pay scale and others follow suit.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT) Corp, Starbucks Corp (NASDAQ:SBUX), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) have raised or are planning to hike wages.
The current minimum wage at the federal level is $7.25 per hour, enacted more than a decade ago.