Bank of America is raising its minimum wage for employees to $20 an hour

Bank of America is raising the minimum wage for employees this year and plans to hike it to $20 an hour in two years.“If you get a job at Bank of America, you’ll make $41,000” a year, Chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan told MSNBC on Tuesday. “With the success our company has ... we have to share that success with our teammates.”Starting May 1, the hourly minimum wage will rise to $17 and will go higher in increments for the next two years, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company said Tuesday in a statement. The bank has also frozen health-care cost increases for lower-paid employees, Moynihan said on MSNBC.The move comes the day before Moynihan, J.P. Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and five other bank CEOs are scheduled to testify before the Democrat-led House Financial Services Committee in Washington. Since income inequality is a hot-button issue ahead of the 2020 election, raising wages for the lowest-paid bank workers may insulate Moynihan from criticism about the gap between branch tellers and the company’s highest-paid employees.