Highest Minimum-Wage State Washington Beats U.S. in Job Creation
By Victoria Stilwell, Peter Robison and William Selway Mar 8, 2014 12:00 AM ET
When Washington residents voted in 1998 to raise the states minimum wage and link it to the cost of living, opponents warned the measure would be a job-killer. The prediction hasnt been borne out.
In the 15 years that followed, the states minimum wage climbed to $9.32 -- the highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washingtons restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years.
The debate is replaying on a national scale as Democrats led by President Barack Obama push for an increase in the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum, while opponents argue a raise would hurt those its intended to help by axing jobs for the lowest-skilled. Even if that proves true, Washingtons example shows that any such effects arent big enough to throw its economy and labor market off the tracks.
Its hard to see that the state of Washington has paid a heavy penalty for having a higher minimum wage than the rest of the country, said Gary Burtless, an economist at Brookings Institution who formerly was at the U.S. Labor Department.
Raising the U.S. minimum wage to $10.10 in three steps, as Obama proposes, would reduce employment nationally by about 500,000 workers, or about 0.3 percent, according to a Congressional Budget Office report published Feb. 18. At the same time, the increase would lift 900,000 people out of poverty and add $31 billion to the earnings of low-wage Americans, the report found.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-05/washington-shows-highest-minimum-wage-state-beats-u-s-with-jobs.html
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)RainDog
(28,784 posts)GP6971
(31,165 posts)ads in 1998 against raising the minimum wage and caught flak from my wife's right wing family after it passed. I still take great pleasure in asking them how their state is doing compared to ours (WA).
trixicopper
(62 posts)abominable "tip credit" laws. Tipped employees make the same minimum wage as anyone else. As they should everywhere.