State Minimum Wages
The last federal minimum wage increase — to $7.25 per hour, from $6.55 per hour — occurred on July 24, 2009. In the years since Congress last increased the minimum wage, state and local leaders across the country have introduced countless minimum wage proposals, activists have worked to place ballot measures before voters, and companies have taken it upon themselves to increase wages for workers. Currently, 29 states and D.C. have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage.
Push to $15
In 2016, California, New York, and Oregon passed legislation to incrementally increase the states' minimum wages to $15 per hour or near it. After these increases, $15 per hour became the new standard for legislation. Massachusetts passed legislation setting the state on the path to a $15 minimum wage in 2018, while New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, and Connecticut followed suit in 2019. The Illinois bill (IL SB 1) will increase the state's current minimum wage of $8.25 per hour to $9.25 by next January, followed by $10 per hour in July 2020. The minimum wage would then increase by $1 each year until 2025. Likewise, New Jersey's legislation (NJ AB 15) would gradually take the state from $8.85 to $15 per hour by 2024. California's increase raises the wage statewide to $15 per hour in 2022, while New York's incremental increase to $15 per hour varies by location. Large employers in New York City have been subject to a $15-per-hour minimum wage since 2018, but rates in Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties will reach $15 per hour in 2021. The new law in Oregon also established location-based wages, with the wage gradually rising to $14.75 per hour in 2023. Since then, many proposals have included formulas for location-based increases, taking into account the differences in costs of living between urban and rural areas.
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Research & Resources
Chamber Resources
Research
- David Neumark & William Wascher - Minimum Wages and Employment (finding that “the oft-stated assertion that recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect”) (Jan. 2007).
- John Schmitt (Center for Economic and Policy Research) - Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment? (reviewing recent economic scholarship on how a minimum wage increase affects employment and points out that while empirical evidence from some studies on minimum wage increases do not find major employment disruptions, it lists eleven “channels of adjustment” that employers use to adjust to the wage increase, including reduction in hours worked, reductions in non-wage benefits, higher prices, wage compression, and reduction in profits) (Feb. 2013).
- Stephen S. Fuller - The Impact of Raising the Minimum Wage on the Maryland Economy (finding that “raising the minimum wage in Maryland would: (1) increase the price of consumer goods; (2) reduce employment and personal income; (3) weaken the state’s competitive position relative to adjacent states having lower labor costs; (4) slow the growth of gross state product; and (5) slow population growth and weaken real estate values) (Jan. 2014).
- Neumark, Salas & Wascher - Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater? (July 2013).
- CBO - The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income (Feb. 2014).
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers from the Current Population Survey.
- Minnesota Department of Labor & Industry - Annual Minnesota Minimum-Wage Report (presenting statistics about minimum-wage workers in the state).
- Letter: More than 500 economists argue against a minimum wage increase (2014).
- Robert D. Atkinson (ITIF Blog Post) - Minimum Wage/Maximum Growth (Feb. 20, 2013) (arguing that the traditional neoclassical economic argument that a minimum wage increase will hurt economic growth is wrong).
- Roosevelt Institute - Media Coverage of Raising Wages: Narrative Analysis of 2014 Press Coverage (July 2016).
- NELP - The Growing Movement for $15 (Nov. 2015).
- Mark J. Perry (AEI) - Ten reasons that market-determined wages are better than government-mandated minimum wages (Nov. 2015).
- Michael R. Strain (AEI) - New(est) evidence on the minimum wage (Jan. 4, 2016).
- Jeffrey Clemens - The Minimum Wage and the Great Recession: Evidence from the Current Population Survey (Dec. 2015) (finding that the period's full set of minimum wage increases reduced employment among individuals ages 16 to 30 with less than a high school education by 5.6 percentage points).
- Peter Brummund & Michael R. Strain (AEI) - Real and permanent minimum wages (Feb. 2016) (finding evidence that indexing minimum wages to inflation and differences in county-level wages and mobility rates lead to heterogenous employment effects following minimum wage increases).
- Pew Research Center - 5 facts about the minimum wage (Jan. 2017).
- Jeffrey Clemens & Michael R. Strain (AEI) - Estimating the Employment Effects of Recent Minimum Wage Changes: Early Evidence, an Interpretative Framework, and a PreCommitment to Future Analysis (Jan. 2017).
- David Neumark & Cortnie Shupe (Mercatus Center) - Declining Teen Employment (February 2017).
- David Cooper (Economic Policy Institute) - Raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift wages for 41 million American workers (April 2017).
- Arindrajit Dube (Washington Center for Equitable Growth) - Minimum wages and the distribution of family incomes in the United States (April 2017).
- United States Census Bureau - The Distributional Effect of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data (Mar. 2018).
- Robert Atkinson (Democracy) - The Pro-Growth Minimum Wage (Summer 2018).
- Adam Millsap (Forbes) - How Higher Minimum Wages Impact Employment (Sep. 28, 2018).
- Dee Gill (UCLA Anderson Review) - Through the Minimum Wage Looking Glass: Economic Consensus Unrealized (Oct. 3, 2018).
- Michael R. Strain (AEI) - A $15 Minimum Wage Will Harm Workers (Feb. 7, 2019).
- Jeffrey Clemens (CATO Institute) - Making Sense of the Minimum Wage: A Roadmap for Navigating Recent Research (May 14, 2019).
Journalism & Opinion
- Sophie Quinton (Stateline) - States Battle Cities Over Minimum Wage (July 13, 2015).
- V. John Ella - Encouraged by the Feds, Cities Are Punishing Business (Nov. 1, 2015).
- Gabriel Thompson (The Nation) - This Is What $15 an Hour Looks Like (Jan. 7, 2016).
- Lauren Doroghazi & Liz Malm (MultiState Insider) - State Minimum Wage Laws: Where Do States Stand and Which States Might See Action This Year? (Mar. 2, 2016).
- Elaine S. Povich (Stateline) - New State Minimum Wage Hikes Come with 'Off Ramps' (June 29, 2016).
- Noam Scheiber (NYT) - Higher Minimum Wage May Have Losers (Jan. 10, 2017).
- Michael Strain (Bloomberg View) - High Minimum Wage Has Losers and Winners (July 10, 2017).
- Jorge Lima (NBC) - Opinion: Why We Should Reject Minimum Wage Hikes (July 20, 2017).
- Jonathan Cowan and Jim Kessler (NYT) - A Smarter Minimum Wage (Nov. 17, 2017).
- Laura Huizar (NELP) - A $12 Minimum Wage: Broad Benefits for Workers and Small Businesses Across Missouri (Aug. 21, 2018).
- Mattie Quinn (Governing) - Does Raising the Minimum Wage Save Money on Social Services? (Mar. 2019).
- Chris Marr (Bloomberg Law) - States with $15 Minimum Wage Laws Doubled This Year (May 23, 2019).
- Sasha Hupka (PennLive) - Is 2019 the year Pa. raises its minimum wage? The ‘good economy’ might make that possible (June 4, 2019).
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