Blog Posts  (Page31)

According to a recent Quinnipiac Poll, 80 percent of New Yorkers support increasing the state’s minimum wage to $8.75 from $7.25. It’s a result policymakers should take with a grain of salt. Polls like this one bank on emotion and ignore the fine print. Take a poll conducted by ORC…

Dr. David Neumark is a noted economist and minimum wage expert from the University of California-Irvine. He’s often cited by groups across the ideological spectrum for his unbiased research on the minimum wage and other economic issues. Yet one labor union-backed advocacy group, the National Employment Law Project (NELP), has…

Yesterday, Maryland Senate Majority Leader Robert Garagiola (D) and the advocacy group Progressive Maryland launched a campaign to increase the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $10—a 38 percent increase. If successful, the supporters of the effort will end up hurting the very employees they intend to help. According to…

Last November, voters in Albuquerque, New Mexico approved a ballot measure increasing the city’s minimum wage from $7.50 per hour to $8.50 per hour, or nearly $2,100 a year per employee. On January 1 of this year, the wage hike went into effect; within two weeks, local businesses were already…

This study from economist Aaron Yelowitz at the University of Kentucky suggests that, though San Francisco considers itself a unique outpost of progressive thought, the laws of economics still apply. A double-digit compensation floor that affects employees at businesses with single-digit profit margins is guaranteed to create unintended consequences, no matter the political climate in which it occurs.

EPI’s analysis of proposals to create a $9.80 minimum wage, based on Census Bureau data, finds that they would be poorly targeted to the low-income families they’re intended to help. This is consistent with a wide body of economic research finding that minimum wages are a poor way to reduce poverty, and also reduce employment opportunities among the least-skilled.

In this study, economists Joseph Sabia at San Diego State University and Robert Nielsen at the University of Georgia found no evidence that a higher minimum wage has helped reduce financial, housing, health, or food insecurity. This is true across all employees in general, and for smaller sub-sets of the less-educated and less-experienced.

The Employment Policies Institute announced that ten states and three cities will increase their minimum wages on January 1, 2013.

Today, the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) released a new study authored by University of Kentucky economist Aaron Yelowitz, which examines the impact of citywide compensation floors in cities like San Francisco. The study finds that (all else being equal) each additional $1 increase in wage and benefit mandates reduces young…

Today, the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) released a new analysis assessing the impact of a proposed ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage in the City of San Jose to $10 an hour and index it for inflation. The City Council will hear testimony on the initiative tomorrow, May 22nd,…