A minimum wage of $ 15 began as a slogan. This week it is expected that the House will be adopted.

These are the places where a minimum wage of $ 15 could make all the difference in people's lives, because many workers currently earn less. For the same reason, it is also the countries that are most likely to lose their jobs because companies will have to spend more to comply.

Will it cost jobs and is it important?

But most of these increases have occurred in relatively hot labor markets where, at least in recent years, employers have no choice but to continue to recruit staff, even if this implies an increase in price. The situation could be different in countries with weaker local economies, where firms operate on smaller margins and do not have as much room to demand more.

The verdict: by 2025, the legislation would increase the wages of 27 million people and create 1.3 million fewer jobs, or 0.8% of total employment. They came to this conclusion by averaging the numbers representing what other studies had found to be the "elasticity" of employment – the sensitivity of jobs to the evolution of the minimum wage.

The CBO strongly emphasized the uncertainty surrounding these estimates, but both parties immediately seized portions of the report as evidence in support of their positions, while some criticized its methodology.

"What we needed to do is reconcile much of the previous literature," said Dube, who provided information to the CBO about a previous project. "We are specifically showing what are the problems with some of these papers, and what I see are particular choices that, in my opinion, are not justified and clearly affect the end result."

Others felt that the CBO study constituted an effective synthesis of a complex literature and could bring the bill to a more modest level. Daniel Hamermesh, a prominent economics researcher at Barnard College, also published articles on the minimum wage and reviewed CBO's report in advance, calling it "extremely good and extremely fair". Due to the effects of the $ 15 employment option, it favors $ 12, which has little impact.

"It's closer to religion than anything else," said Hamermesh, on both sides of the debate on the minimum wage.

Methodologists aside, progressives say it's important to focus on the overall consequences of raising the minimum wage on well-being, as well as on the government's possible responses to help anyone likely to be unemployed because of this.

David Howell, professor of economics and public policy at the New School, says that it is more important to increase the wages of lower incomes than to preserve the lowest paid jobs.

Half of the 1.3 million jobs lost are those held by teenagers, he said, many of whom could be employed as part of workplace learning programs that would allow for a better job. progression to a career. All others, given the high demand for US workers in areas such as nursing and construction, could be recycled for higher paying jobs.

"The American problem is not the quantity of jobs," says Howell. "It's the quality of jobs."

Both sides are digging

After several months of lobbying between parties, the Democratic caucus seems to have come to support the bill. Members of the moderate NDP Coalition were reassured by the addition of an amendment that would require a study of the effects of the bill in a few years, leaving the possibility of making adjustments if more and more. 39 jobs were lost than expected.

"If the House adopts and exceeds $ 15, it is a dead letter, it will not go anywhere in the Senate, and any impetus for a compromise that could be promulgated is dead," he said. said Neil Bradley, policy officer in the House.

Bradley responds to the charge that companies should already be able to pay higher wages, given the massive reduction in their income taxes in 2017: "We do not think the government can claim everyone's income and pay it back. when he sees good. "

Perhaps the House could find a compromise with a view to getting something passed in the Senate this session.

"If they have an interest in talking, we will obviously talk about it," said Representative Bobby Scott, who, as chair of the education and labor committee, pushed the bill forward. He is shy, however, on until he is ready to go. "I'm not going to say that I'm going to accept this or that."

Even if nothing happens before the 2020 election, the union that pushed $ 15 into the national arena sees the debate as a way to mobilize voter support. The goal is to elect a democratic Congress that does not have to compromise – or to persuade the Republicans to change their minds.

"We want to use the Senate salary increase bill as a way to inject it into Republican-dominated states and districts," said SEIU's Henry. "The fight we want to lead is to convince them that the political price they would pay to vote against is not worth it."