Alfredo Ortiz of Job Creators Network writes at TheHill that, based on a CBO report, the proposed raising of the federal minimum wage to $15 would cost up to 3.7 million jobs and seriously weaken the first rung of the career ladder. Rather, he suggests, legislators should work on ways to match low-wage workers with the millions of available jobs that pay middle-class wages:

Just in time for next week’s potential House of Representatives vote on the Raise the Wage Act, which would increase the federal minimum wage to $15, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is out with a damning new report on the bill’s consequences.

Congress’s official budget scorekeeper estimates that a $15 minimum wage would cost up to 3.7 million jobs, with median job loss expected at 1.3 million — about 7 percent of the nation’s entry-level workers and 1 percent of the overall workforce. . . .

Armed with this new information, legislators should scrap their job-killing minimum wage plans and refocus their workforce efforts on finding out how to match low-wage workers with the millions of available jobs that pay middle-class wages. Call it a Fight for $50 — as in a fight for careers that pay $50,000 or more.

Read the rest of the article here.