I have recently seen a huge amount of posts on FB from Americans regarding tipping at eating places, they state that even in places that already have a service charge automatically added to their bill the servers expect up to 25% tip as well and can be quite surly if they don't get it and even write insulting comments on the receipt. Is this a fairly new thing ? as in the past i have spent a lot of time in the US but i have to admit the last time i was there was around 20 years ago so maybe things have changed as i never experienced anything like this.
The federal minimum wage in the USA has been frozen since 2009 at 7.25$ per hour, which is less than half the minimum wage in all of Western Europe. On a purchasing power parity based comparison life is tough if you make minimum wage especially if you live in a big city. The hospitality industry has a high concentration of low skill manual labour jobs, waiters and waitresses included, so yeah, if your government won't protect you with a decent minimum wage then you'll depend on gifts (tips) to sustain you. No surprise then that the expected tip percentage has gone up way past what it used to be (the 10% or so it still is in Europe). Although individual states in the USA can set their own minimum wage (and many do but more than 20 don't) the ones that do set it higher all have a higher cost of living than average, so it is questionable what the effect is on the buying power of those on minimum wage.
