University of Washington Study Concludes Seattle $15/hr Wage Cost Jobs (Originally Published Aug 1, 2017)
The University of Washington released a study has concluded that the $15/hour minimum wage hike in Seattle is costing minimum wage workers hours, jobs and pay. You can read the abstract from the paper below…
Take a look at a July 2019 headline from NPR…
$15 Minimum Wage Would Boost 17 Million Workers, Cut 1.3 Million Jobs, CBO Says Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would increase the pay of at least 17 million people, but also put 1.3 million Americans out of work, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office released on Monday.
Abstract from paper
This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016. Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies.
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