In: Economics
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"Why raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour in Pennsylvania is a good idea, makes good economic sense, is good for Pennsylvania state coffers, workers and business."
President Obama explained in his 2014 State of Union Address that he intends to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour an increase of over 40 percent. Supporters of policy claims that this increase would benefit the country and its economy and result in no loss of jobs while the opposition claims that this would be derimental to minimum wage employees resulting in 500000 fewer jobs.
supporters said that, raising the minimum wage workers have more money ripples throughout the economy as minimum wage employee. This will lead to increase more jobs. If minimum wage emplyee are spending more and need to hire more emlpoyees to keep up with the increased sales from the minimum wage employee who are buying more. And the federal minimum wage needs to be raised in order to account for inflation which raises every year and the minimum wage has only been risen three times in the past three decades.
Pennsylvania Minimum Wage :
From the studies of MARK PRICE due to the Pennsylvania legislatures failure to raise their state minimum wage, Pennsylvania's minimum wage workers have lost ground relative to their cuonterparts in surrounding states Low wage Pennsylvania workers in large parts of rural Pennsylvania have lost the most ground. In food services, the prototypical low wage industry, low wage growth in much of rural Pennsylvania has been coupled with the slowest job growthin Pennsylvania and its six neighboring states. The last Pennsylvania General Assembly last raised the minimum wage in July 2007to $7.15 per hour or about two fifth(39%) of the then typical wage for full-time full year workers in Pennsylvania ($18.29).
Overall in Pennsylvania real wages in food services grew by just 5% while on average across the region (Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia) they grew 7.8% between 2012 and 2016. Not only has wage growth been stronger in the rest of our region where the minimum wage has increased so has employment growth. As the purchasing power of the minimum wage rose 12% across the region, payroll growth in food services was up 12.3% compared too much slower growth of 6.8% Pennsylvania where the minimum wage lost 4.7% of its PP from 2012 to 2016.
A minimum wage increased in Pennsylvania is long overdue and would provide a critical boost to family incomes while making important progress towards reducing income inequality.
In general researchers do not link minimum wage increases to changes in overall employment , but corporate lobbyists in oppositions to wage increases frequently claim minimum wage increases imperil broder job growth.
Inequality measured in terms of the income and wealth has been on the rise in America in the last 38 years. According to estimates from the World Inequality Report the share of national income flowing to the top 1% has nearly doubled since 1980 an outcome largely at the expence of the share of income national income flowing to the bottom 50% of the population. Setting the Pennsylvania labour marketon a path to a $15 minimum wage, eliminating the tipped minimum wage, indexing the minimum wage to the median wage and cracking down on employer theft of wage are some of the most important and practical steps that we can take to arrest the rise in inequality we have observed in the last four decades in America.