Wage Floor Is Increasing in 8 States in New Year
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: December 23, 2011
A landmark 1994 study by David Card and Alan Krueger, who is now the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, found that raising the minimum wage did not lower employment in a case study of a local fast-food industry.
Dozens of similar studies, looking at a variety of locations and industries, have been published since then, and the results have run the gamut.
For example, a study of San Francisco airport employees, conducted in 2004 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Waterloo, also found that increasing wages did not lower employment, and instead reduced employee turnover. But a literature review of a variety of studies published around the same time came to the opposite conclusion.
Whatever the effect on total employment, for those workers who do receive raises in the new year, the added income still will not be enough to push their families above the poverty line.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 24, 2011, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Wage Floor To Be Raised In 8 States In New Year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/business/economy/8-states-to-raise-minimum-wage.html?src=recg