Daily Kos

FACTS

The argument that increasing the minimum wage will reduce the number of jobs in the U.S. economy (be a jobkiller, according to Mitch McConnell) has been debunked at least twice.  The first time was in 1994, when UC Berkeley Economics Professor David Card and Princeton University Professor Alan Krueger studied the effects on restaurant minimum wage workers in adjacent New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas after New Jersey raised the minimum wage.  Contrary to economic theory, Card and Krueger found "no indication that the rise in minimum wage reduced employment."

The stick had hit the hornet's nest and economists fiercely fought the study methodology, findings, analyses, conclusions, statistical inferences, and sample size.  The most practical argument questioned whether it is reasonable to extrapolate to the entire United States from this one study of one area.  Another had to do with "lurking variables," which means there could be actual causal variables not studied, but which are significant.  

So in 2010 UC Berkeley economists Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment published their study Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties.

Dube et. al. looked at minimum wage comparisons in adjacent counties across the United States, similar communities with and without minimum wage increases.  It was, as they say, a very robust analysis.  Result:  No Drop In Jobs. No loss in jobs.  

Then in 2013 John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy Research reviewed the research to date and expanded analysis of variables.  Per the CEPR Executive Summary,

Executive Summary

The employment effect of the minimum wage is one of the most studied topics in all of economics. This report examines the most recent wave of this research – roughly since 2000 – to determine the best current estimates of the impact of increases in the minimum wage on the employment prospects of low-wage workers. The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage.

The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to minimum-wage increases that may help to explain why the measured employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest evidence suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are: reductions in labor turnover; improvements in organizational efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners ("wage compression"); and small price increases.

Given the relatively small cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid employment losses, even for employers with a large share of low-wage workers.

VOTES AND NATIONAL POLITICS

Clearly, the purpose of the minimum wage is to give low-wage workers some kind of levelling tool in the unequal bargain between the person and the employer.  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has dataon the number of low-wage people in each state.  It is possible to look at it and see how many low-wage people could Vote in each state.  Doing so, one can then look at whether those low-wage employees could tip the vote in each of those states represented by a GOP Senator who blocked the minimum wage yesterday. Some of this information could be amplified by media.  

But if Congress does not listen to the general public and if polling shows that minimum wage is not a winning election issue, where is the leverage?

HOPE IS IN THE STATES.  AND CITIES.

It is arguably easier to get access and wage increases in cities and states than in Congress. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have raised the minimum wage, soon to be 26 states, including Maryland, Minnesota, Delaware, West Virginia and Hawaii, which have recently approved minimum wage increases.

California will raise its minimum wage to $9, effective July 1. Then it will rise to $10 by Jan. 1, 2016.

Connecticut will raise its minimum from $8.70 to $10.10 by 2017.

Delaware will raise its minimum wage to $7.75, effective June 1 2014; it will go to $8.25 by June 2015.

The District of Columbia will raise its minimum wage to $9.50 by July, then to $11.50 by 2016 and indexing it to inflation thereafter.

Hawaii will raise its minimum wage to $10.10 by 2018.

Maryland will raise its minimum wage to $8 by Jan. 1, 2015; $8.25 by July 1, 2015; then by 50-cent increments until it hits $10.10 by July 1, 2018.

Minnesota  will raise its minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.50 by 2016 and be indexed to inflation starting in 2018.

New York will raise its minimum wage to $8.75 by the end of this year, then to $9 by the end of 2015.

West Virginia will raise its minimum wage to $8.75 by 2016.

Cities raising or working to raise their minimum wages include New York, Oakland, CA, Portland Maine, Seattle, and San Francisco,

But Oklahoma, one of the shames of the nation, the state that just killed a man by torture with undisclosed drugs from undisclosed providers, just passed a law banning cities and towns from raising their local minimum wages.  

Short of forcing Congressmembers to spend a month on minimum wage, the critical mass from cities and states, mass media megaphones, public opprobrium, and voter turnout are the public's best tools for trying to get a federal minimum wage law.  In the meanwhile, do remember to tip every waitress and waiter, every barrista and barmaid, every hotel maid, every musician with a tip jar and street artist.  Talk wages, talk vote.