Seattle Minimum Wage Hike Backfires Hurting Low Income Workers

The progressive city of Seattle pushed its minimum wage up to $15 dollars an hour but a new study from economists at the University of Washington suggests the measure is hurting the very people it was intended to help.

This is an issue the left often refuses to understand. If you force a higher wage than the market demands, employers are forced to adjust in ways that are less favorable.

Ben Casselman and Kathryn Casteel report at FiveThirtyEight:

Seattle’s Minimum Wage Hike May Have Gone Too FarAs cities across the country pushed their minimum wages to untested heights in recent years, some economists began to ask: How high is too high? Seattle, with its highest-in-the-country minimum wage, may have hit that limit.In January 2016, Seattle’s minimum wage jumped from $11 an hour to $13 for large employers, the second big increase in less than a year. New research released Monday by a team of economists at the University of Washington suggests the wage hike may have come at a significant cost: The increase led to steep declines in employment for low-wage workers, and a drop in hours for those who kept their jobs. Crucially, the negative impact of lost jobs and hours more than offset the benefits of higher wages — on average, low-wage workers earned $125 per month less because of the higher wage, a small but significant decline.“The goal of this policy was to deliver higher incomes to people who were struggling to make ends meet in the city,” said Jacob Vigdor, a University of Washington economist who was one of the study’s authors. “You’ve got to watch out because at some point you run the risk of harming the people you set out to help.”

Here’s a video report from FOX News:

Max Ehrenfreund has more at the Washington Post:

A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news for liberalsWhen Seattle officials voted three years ago to incrementally boost the city’s minimum wage up to $15 an hour, they’d hoped to improve the lives of low-income workers. Yet according to a major new study that could force economists to reassess past research on the issue, the hike has had the opposite effect.The city is gradually increasing the hourly minimum to $15 over several years. Already, though, some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They’ve cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go, the study found.The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city. The study, published as a working paper Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer reviewed.

Even progressive writer Jill Fillipovic has acknowledged the reality:

Last word goes to Iowahawk:

Featured image via YouTube.

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