A study published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) earlier this year lays the main data out.The bill also contains other provisions—phasing out existing “sub-minimum wages” currently authorized for tipped workers (a meager $2.13 an hour), a youth (under 20) minimum wage of $4.25 an hour, and the phase-out of sub-minimum wages for disabled workers. As with the rise in the standard minimum wage, the rise in minimum wages for these workers is phased in over a multi-year period.
Nonprofit Quarterly
July 30, 2019
Impacted workers include those in restaurants, bars, hotels, frontline retail — like cashiers — and many in health care, according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. Shierholz is also former chief economist for the Department of Labor. Workers in smaller-scale manufacturing and day care are also impacted, said David Neumark, an economist at the University of California, Irvine.
CNBC
July 30, 2019
The “Fight for $15” has become a rallying cry for advocates of a higher minimum wage south of the border. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a minimum wage increase to $15 would raise wages for 26.6 percent of the U.S. workforce.
Huffpost Canada
July 30, 2019
Supporters of the legislation do not necessarily object to tying the wage increase to cost of living, but many still see $15 as the appropriate national floor. Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist for the Department of Labor, pointed out $15 in 2025 would be equivalent to about $13 today, and that is not a realistic living wage anywhere.
“There’s no place in today’s economy where even a single adult with no kids can meet that budget on a $13 minimum wage,” she said.
WJLA
July 30, 2019
Critics of the UW researchers have seized on Seattle’s uniqueness to discount the UW findings. Ben Zipperer of the liberal Economic Policy Institute wrote that the UW research is based on a “flawed comparison” between Seattle and the rest of the state. He argued that the decline in low wage jobs was due to a hot economy boosting low-wage jobs into high-wage jobs, not the new minimum wage. The data did show, Zipperer argued, that all of the workers they studied were “better off after the minimum wage increase” — higher-hour workers earned more with a higher wage while the low-hour workers got the same pay for less work.
VOX
July 30, 2019
4) A higher minimum wage will only hurt workers…. (Another myth was that only teenagers earned the minimum; David Cooper’s work shows the main beneficiaries of higher minimum wages are working adults.)
VOX
July 30, 2019
As the federal minimum wage has stagnated, states and localities have increasingly acted on their own. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the effective minimum wage has increased in 27 states and the District of Columbia since 2014; 29 states and the District now have a minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum wage.
The Washington Post
July 30, 2019
Many analyses, including from the Economic Policy Institute, have found workers in labor unions get paid better than those outside of unions.
Mail Tribune
July 18, 2019
According to the Economic Policy Institute, unemployment among African Americans in Georgia is at 5.7%. Hispanic and white unemployment rates are below 3%.
GPB Radio News
July 18, 2019