Election Day Could Bring Raises To 680,000 Low-Wage Workers
Voters in five states — Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota — will decide on ballot initiatives proposing an increase in the states’ minimum wages. Four of the initiatives would be binding; in Illinois, the ballot measure is only advisory.
The votes come at a time when the minimum wage has emerged as a national issue. President Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from its current level of $7.25. Labor activists have gone further, pushing for a $15 “living wage.”1
Efforts to raise the federal minimum wage have foundered, but have made progress at the state and local level. Several states, including California and New York, have passed legislation to increase their minimum wages in recent years. The city of SeaTac, Washington, last year voted to increase its to $15 an hour, the highest in the country; nearby Seattle this year decided to follow suit, although it will phase in its increase gradually over seven years.
Economists are divided over whether these efforts are a good idea. In a working paper released Monday, David Neumark, J.M. Ian Salas and William Wascher fired the latest salvo in a long-running battle over the effects of raising the minimum wage. Neumark, his coathors and their allies argue raising the minimum wage leads to lost jobs; their opponents, including University of Massachusetts economist Arindrajit Dube, argue the impact on employment is minimal. A 2008 meta-study looked at 64 minimum-wage analyses and concluded that they generally found little to no impact on employment. A poll of leading economists last year found them nearly evenly divided on the question of whether a $9-an-hour minimum wage would “make it noticeably harder for low-skilled workers to find employment.”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-day-could-bring-raises-to-680000-low-wage-workers/
