Blog Posts  (Page37)

Yesterday, the New York Times editorialized (again) in favor of a higher minimum wage, making the following argument: “Over all, the argument that a higher wage will kill jobs has been debunked by a range of studies showing that a higher minimum wage boosts pay without…

During last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama called for a 24 percent increase to the minimum wage to $9 per hour, and to tie future increases to changes in the Consumer Price Index. The President’s goal is to help those in poverty, but his policy would do…

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.