THE MINIMUM WAGE PAGE

This video requires Flash 8. It's also available via the KRC podcast at the iTunes Music Store.

New KRC Policy Watch Analyzes SB 1090 and Finds Little Benefit for PA Workers

The analysis shows that SB1090 does not make up for erosion of the minimum wage by inflation since 1979 and creates an irrational sub-minimum wage for many Pennsylvania employees.

download policy watch on sb1090

Small Business Job Growth Faster In States With Minimum Wages Higher Than $5.15

Findings Contradict Stories Told By Minimum Wage Opponents

Keystone Research Center Releases Revised Fact Sheet on Effects of Raising Pennsylvania’s Minimum Wage

Harrisburg, PA – The Albany, New York, based Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI www.fiscalpolicy.org) today released a new study demonstrating that job growth among small businesses was faster in recent years in states with a minimum wage higher than $5.15 per hour.

The Keystone Research Center (KRC www.keystoneresearch.org) co-released the new FPI study in Pennsylvania along with a revised Fact Sheet summarizing findings from recent KRC studies on the effects of raising the state’s minimum wage, a measure still being considered by the General Assembly.

“FPI’s new evidence shows that a higher minimum wage not only benefits workers but can spur economic growth that benefits small business owners” said KRC labor economist Mark Price. “Increases in labor costs are offset by savings from lower recruitment and training costs and by greater revenue from increased sales.”

NEW RESEARCH RECENTLY RELEASED

Stuck on the Bottom Rung of the Wage Ladder

Over the last several months Pennsylvania lawmakers are currently considering whether to increase the state’s minimum hourly wage. In this debate, one question concerns whether the earnings of workers at the low end of the job market will increase even without a higher minimum wage. The National Federation of Independent Business claims, for example, that 63% of minimum-wage workers receive wage increases after one year, and therefore a minimum wage increase is unnecessary.

A new KRC Briefing Paper shows that mobility out of low-earning jobs is limited. Among the 670,000 individuals who started out with below-poverty-level earnings in 1998 and worked substantially in Pennsylvania in 2004, KRC finds that

• 261,000 -- about two in five -- still had below-poverty-level earnings in 2004 (i.e., $6.26 per hour for a full-time, full-year worker);

• 245,000, another nearly two in five, had earnings in 2004 of at least one but less than two times the poverty level and thus below what economists consider a “self-sufficiency” income ? i.e., an income high enough to pay for a basic needs budget without public assistance.

Adults Would Benefit Most from Raising Pennsylvania's Minimum Wage

But Few Working Adults Would Benefit From A State Hourly Minimum Wage Increase To Only $6.25

Working adults would be the primary beneficiary of a hike in Pennsylvania’s minimum wage according to a new study released today by the Keystone Research Center (KRC).

The KRC Policy Watch shows that 303,000 adults would benefit directly if the minimum wage was raised to $7.15 an hour. Fewer than half as many teenagers, just 124,000, would benefit from such a hike.

“Opponents of raising the minimum wage frequently assert that many if not most of those who would benefit from a minimum wage raised are teenagers. Our analysis shows that this is clearly not the case in Pennsylvania,” said Mark Price, an economist at KRC and an author of the data review.

754,000 Pennsylvania Workers Would Benefit from Raising the State's Minimum Wage to $7.15 According to New KRC Estimates

In a new estimate based on new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, KRC has found that 754,000 Pennsylvania workers would benefit directly or indirectly from an increase in the state’s minimum hourly wage from the current $5.15 to $7.15 by January 2007.

Rural and Urban Employees Working at or Near $5.15 an Hour Would See Greatest Gains from Minimum Wage Raise

754,000 Pennsylvanians Would Benefit from Raise in Minimum Wage

The KRC briefing paper, Where Pennsylvania Low-Wage Workers Live, has been revised with new data and provides updated estimates the number of workers in each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties who would benefit from raising the Commonwealth's minimum wage.

The data show that in 35 of the state's rural counties, one in four or more workers would benefit directly or indirectly from a minimum wage increase. In each of Pennsylvania’s two most populous counties, Allegheny and Philadelphia, about 86,000 workers would benefit directly and roughly 65,000 additional workers would benefit indirectly.

View new map of share of minimum wage rise benefit by county.

Dr. Stephen Herzenberg Testifies Before PA Senate Labor and Industry Committee

KRC Executive Director Stephen Herzenberg recently testified before the Pennsylvania Senate's Labor and Industry Committee during its hearings in Philadelphia on the minimum wage.

Dr. Herzenberg made the case for raising Pennsylvania's minimum wage as an appropriate response to the wage decline among low wage workers documented in The State of Working Pennsylvania 2005. The text of Herzenberg's testimony submitted to the committee is available for download, and a summary of The State of Working Pennsylvania 2005 is available at www.stateofworkingpa.com.

Over forty academic and private-sector economists from around the state signed the statement calling for a rise in the Pennsylvania's minimum wage and explaining its importance to the Commonwealth's economy. You can read the economists' statement or download a pdf version from: www.paminimumwage.com