As recently as last year, the Democratic Party’s leaders thought the idea of a $15 federal minimum wage was unrealistic and even pushed back against it. That ended in July when the official party platform, bowing to pressure from organized labor and Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters, adopted a call for a $15 federal minimum, more than double the current rate of $7.25 an hour. […]
When Seattle increased its minimum to $15 in 2014, a boost of nearly $6 an hour, it also commissioned a study of the increase’s effect by the University of Washington. A report released in July found that an increase to $11 an hour in April 2015, the first part of the phase-in (the $15 rate will not go into effect until 2017), had not benefited Seattle’s low-wage workers.
Instead, it resulted in modest declines to their employment rates and hours worked. While the workers did experience boosts in earnings overall, the report found the increases would have happened without the higher minimum thanks to the region’s growing economy. …
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
