ACADEMIC SIGN-ON LETTER: It's Time To Raise The Minimum Wage in Pennsylvania
Today, workers who earn the Pennsylvania minimum wage make $7.25 per hour—about 29 percent less per hour than their counterparts made 50 years ago (after adjusting for inflation). We can afford to pay the lowest-paid workers in Pennsylvania substantially more than what their counterparts were paid a half century ago. Workers produce more today from each hour of work, with Pennsylvania productivity doubling since the late 1960s.
We, the undersigned, support increasing the Pennsylvania minimum wage to $15 by 2025, and then indexing it to median wages to protect against future erosion. We also support gradually phasing out the outdated sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, which is $2.83 per hour in Pennsylvania.
This policy would directly lift the wages of nearly 1.5 million workers when fully implemented. Another about 500,000 workers whose wages are just above the new minimum would likely see a wage increase through “spillover” effects, as employers adjust their internal wage scales. The vast majority of employees who would benefit are adults—disproportionately women—in working families, who work at least 20 hours a week and depend on their earnings to make ends meet.
The last decade has seen a wealth of rigorous academic research on the effect of minimum wage increases on employment with the weight of the evidence showing that previous, modest increases in the minimum wage had little or no negative effects on the employment of low-wage workers.
A $15 minimum wage by 2025 would result in about $6.5 billion in higher wages for 2 million low-wage Pennsylvania workers, which would also benefit their families and their communities. Since lower-paid workers spend a large share of their additional earnings, this injection of wages would modestly stimulate consumer demand, business activity, and job growth. Further, infrequent and inadequate minimum wage increases are directly responsible for growing inequality between the bottom and the middle class; this minimum wage increase would provide a significant and much needed boost to the earnings of low-wage workers. Indexing the minimum wage to growth in the median wage would also ensure that the wage floor keeps up with growth of middle-wage workers’ earnings going forward.
It is time to support a bold increase in Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to address the fact that our wages for workers at the low end of the labor market have continued to stagnate and to help reverse decades of growing pay inequality.
Signed,
Geoffrey Schneider, Bucknell University
Robert J Shapiro, Georgetown University McDonough School of Businesss
John Schmitt*, Economic Policy Institute
Nina Banks, Bucknell University
Susan Rose, Dickinson College
Lonnie Golden, Penn State University
Ebru Kongar, Dickinson College
Anthony Underwood, Dickinson College
Lawrence Mishel*, Economic Policy Institute
Chuck Barone, Dickinson College
Sean Flaherty, Franklin and Marshall College
Dennis Deslippe, Franklin & Marshall College
Sylvia A. Allegretto*, University of California, Berkeley
Mark Silverman, Franklin and Marshall College
Antonio Callari, Franklin and Marshall College
Erdogan Bakir, Bucknell University
Erik Love, Dickinson College
Shahram Azhar, Bucknell University
David Brennan, Franklin and Marshall College
Leanne Roncolato, Franklin and Marshall College
Matias Vernengo, Bucknell University
Eiman Zein-Elabdin, Franklin and Marshall College
David Kristjanson-Gural, Bucknell University
Barbara Denison, Shippensburg University
Stephen A. Herzenberg, Keystone Research Center
Mark Price, Keystone Research Center
Jeffrey Shook, University of Pittsburgh
Todd Wolfson**, Rutgers University
Diana Polson, Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center
Joan Maya Mazelis**, Rutgers University
Esra Kodr, Bucknell University
Donna Ashcraft, Clarion University
Jamie Martin, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Sebastián G. Guzmán, West Chester University
Michael Malcolm, West Chester University
Sabina Deitrick, University of Pittsburgh
Tom Tolin, West Chester University
Paul R. Woodburne, Clarion University
* These signers are from Pennsylvania
** These signers live in Pennsylvania