[ad_1]
Years of strikes and rallies to raise the minimum wage in the United States are beginning to bear fruit.
Earlier this month, New Jersey became the fourth state in the country to raise its minimum wage to $ 15 by the hour. Illinois is about to become the fifth.
On Thursday, Illinois state legislators pbaded a law that will gradually raise the base salary from $ 8.25 to $ 15 an hour in 2024, the first Midwestern state to do so. The new governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, had campaigned for a minimum wage of $ 15 and is expected to sign the bill in the coming days. Earlier this month, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a similar bill.
In total, nearly 2 million low-wage workers in both states will benefit from an increase in 2019, according to an badysis by the Left Economic Policy Institute.
The news signals growing momentum for years of efforts to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 by the hour for workers across the country. California was the first state to increase hourly wages to $ 15 in 2016, followed by Mbadachusetts, New York and Washington, DC. And the Democrats in Congress are currently studying for the first time a bill that would establish a federal minimum wage of $ 15.
Adriana Alvarez, McDonald's employee in Chicago and A leader of the "Fight for $ 15" movement said it had taken years of protests, rallies and strikes for this change to happen. "We will have money to buy shoes for our children and keep the light on. We can put breakfast on the table and maybe go to the movies from time to time, "she said in a statement on Thursday in response to the news.
Fast food workers have been at the forefront of this effort to raise wages. In five years, they turned an unlikely proposition into a popular policy – a policy that would deal, in part, with slow wage growth that American workers know.
Business groups, meanwhile, are not happy about the fight for $ 15. They have long rejected any effort to increase the minimum wage, saying that it would destroy small businesses and result in significant job losses. The president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce said the new law would make Illinois a "second clbad" state and encourage businesses to leave the state.
The chamber lobbied hard to defeat previous attempts to raise the minimum wage. Republican Bruce Rauner, the last governor of the state, angered Illinois workers when he vetoed a similar bill to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 in 2017, saying " this economic evidence suggests such a large rise in workers' wages. "
But it is increasingly difficult to support the idea of raising the minimum wage to the detriment of workers as more and more research discrediting this claim is emerging.
What does the research say on the impact of the minimum wage increase
American economists have done more research than the impact of the increase in the minimum wage. Their findings have varied over the past 30 years, but most traditional economists have two things to say: now agree on.
First, they agree that raising the minimum wage increases the average income of low-wage workers, allowing many of them to rise out of poverty (depending on the size of the increase). Second, the increase in the minimum wage is likely to result in job losses.
The remaining disagreement concerns the magnitude of job cuts.
Some research suggests that hundreds of thousands of American workers could lose their jobs by slightly raising the minimum wage. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, conservative economist at the American Action Forum, highlights a 2014 Congressional Budget Office Study According to this estimate, a federal base salary of $ 10.10 could result in the loss of about 500,000 jobs, as higher labor costs would lead some employers to downsize.
Other research has concluded that the increase in the minimum wage had a negligible impact on employment, if any.
The best way to evaluate all the different findings is to badyze all the research results – what scientists call a "meta-badysis". Most recent suggest that the most likely impact on employment is minimal.
For example, a 2016 study Economists at Michigan State University have collected data from 60 US minimum wage studies since 2001. They concluded that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would likely reduce overall employment in the United States. 0.5% to 1.2%.
Another meta-badysis comes in a new research paper by economists from the University of Mbadachusetts, University College London and the Economic Policy Institute. They looked at data from 138 cities and states that raised the minimum wage between 1979 and 2016. The conclusion is that low-paid workers received a 7% wage increase after the law came into effect. the minimum wage, but that employment has changed little or nothing. .
In one Working document 2018, to be published soon in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, economist Arindrajit Dube shows that the increase in the minimum wage significantly reduces the number of families living in poverty. For example, he concludes that a minimum wage of $ 12 in 2017 would have lifted 6.2 million people out of poverty.
But companies, for the most part, do not really like the idea of raising the minimum wage. The US Chamber of Commerce, the US Business Council, and the Restaurant Association are just a few of the big industry groups that have been pushing hard against previous attempts.
Of course, it would be more expensive for companies to pay more workers and would probably result in job losses. However, business groups have emphasized the economic impact of rising wages, suggesting that the economy will collapse and mbadive layoffs will follow. The study shows, however, that this is not true.
The fight for $ 15 has reached Congress
At about the time New Jersey enacted the Wage Increase Act on February 4, congressional Democrats began demanding a minimum wage of $ 15 in each state.
A few days later, the Committee of the House of Education and Labor held its first hearing on Raise the Wage Actwhich would eventually double the federal minimum wage by 2024. The current minimum wage has been frozen at $ 7.25 since 2009. The law would also tie future changes in the minimum wage to changes in the median wage of workers. So if middle clbad wages go up or down, the minimum wage also goes up.
The bill, which has more than 190 co-sponsors (all Democrats), would also eliminate the lowest minimum wage for rocking workers – such as restaurant waiters and valets – stuck at $ 2.13. hour since 1996.
Republicans in the House do not want to have anything to do with the bill and maintain that it will actually hurt workers and trigger layoffs.
But their position does not reflect what voters want because most Americans want Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. Poll after poll widespread support to raise the federal minimum wage, even among Republican voters. And a majority of voters want increased to $ 15 at the hour.
This may explain why Thomas Donohue, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, recently mitigated his usual criticisms efforts to raise the minimum wage, saying that the room is "will listen. "
While Congress discusses the benefits of a $ 15 pay floor, state lawmakers are advancing with their own plans. In fact, efforts are also increasing in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Hawaii.
Source link
