New Minimum Wage Increases Kick In
The baseline wage goes up this week in 8 states ... and San Francisco. Does this affect you?
Some of America’s lowest-paid workers have gotten a pay raise, courtesy of state and local governments.
As 2012 began, eight states increased their minimum wage levels to adjust to inflation. The highest of the group, Washington, raised the pay grade to $9.04 an hour. Most the other states—Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, and Vermont—rolled out roughly 3 percent increases, The Denver Post reports.
San Francisco topped all the states, raising its minimum wage to $10.24 per hour–the highest such level for any American city, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Across the nation, businesses have protested these pay bumps, saying it’s both unnecessary interference into the private sphere and a burden that they can’t afford.
Skyler Riley, a 20-something entrepreneur who owns Rainin’ Ribs outside of Seattle, told NPR that he’s upset with Washington state’s increase. “You can operate a lot yourself, [to] cut hours in a way [by using] your own two hands, ” Riley said. “But when you’re raising the payroll costs of hourly minimum wage [workers], it’s definitely not helping.”
A University of California professor told NPR that he would expect the minimum-wage workforce to decrease by about 1 to 2 percent following these increases—but with only about 5 percent of America earning minimum wage, he suggested that the increase wouldn’t have a major effect on the economy.
Harvard University economist (and Mitt Romney economic adviser) Greg Mankiw has argued that minimum-wage increases offer the most benefit not to the poor, but to teenagers in middle-class households. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report from 2005, around half of minimum-wage earners were under 25.
