"Restaurant industry groups continue to cite claims by individual businesses that higher wages are forcing them to close. Sorting fact from fiction here isn't easy. But what is clear is that overall job growth data don't back them up."

Other major states appear poised to follow. Leaders in the Illinois legislature are holding hearings on a $15 minimum wage, which could be headed to Governor Bruce Rauner's desk soon. And leaders in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii and Minneapolis are all pushing similar $15 legislation.

And what's been the impact on jobs as states and cities have phased in higher wages? In December the White House Council of Economic Advisors compared employment data for all of the states that raised the minimum wage since the 2009 recession with those that didn't. They found "substantial wage increases with no discernible impact on employment levels or hours worked." That's in line with the lion's share of recent rigorous research on the minimum wage.

Nonetheless, restaurant industry groups continue to cite claims by individual businesses that higher wages are forcing them to close. Sorting fact from fiction here isn't easy. But what is clear is that overall job growth data don't back them up. Instead, strong job expansion has continued in places like San Jose, New York City, Seattle and Chicago that have adopted some of the nation's highest minimum wages.

State-of-the-art studies on the $15 minimum wages proposals in California, New York and Minneapolis help explain why. They find that though a $15 wage increases costs for businesses, it also generates billions in new consumer spending that offset much of the higher cost. In states that have already approved $15 minimum wages, business organizations representing more than 32,000 small businesses have either endorsed -- or in some cases simply not opposed -- the $15 minimum wage. These include the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the Northeast Organic Farmers Association – New York Chapter, and the Long Island and Westchester/Putnam African-American Chambers of Commerce, and others.

What lies ahead? Two strong Fight for $15 supporters, Tom Perez and Keith Ellison, now lead the Democratic National Committee. And more and more Democrats in Congress are talking about coming together around making $15 the next federal minimum wage bill.

But with the Republican Congress and the Trump Administration focused not on raising pay but on rolling back protections for workers, no one is betting on federal action. That means the gulf between the cities and states where pay is beginning to rise, and those where even manufacturing workers and EMT's struggle on less than $15 an hour, will only grow as the nation heads into the 2018 election. That's when voters will get to decide what they think of politicians who side with corporate lobbyists rather than working families fighting for a decent paycheck.

Commentary by Paul Sonn, the general counsel and program director at the National Employment Law Project.

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