More evidence that America's minimum wage could be much higher: Seattle has one of the highest minimum wage rates in the country, and new research finds it hasn't destroyed jobs.
The incredibly affluent, liberal Northwestern city is pushing the minimum wage envelope, with the mandated hourly rate rising to $13 an hour in January 2016 and $15 an hour being phased in with large employers this year, per a 2014 City Council vote for a series of increases over a few years. That's made Seattle a real-time experiment showing how high minimum wages can go without resulting in job losses.
In a new paper, University of California, Berkeley economists analyzed the impact of the change on Seattle's fast-food workers in 2015 and 2016. They found the increase not only boosted weekly wages (if employers cut hours in response to higher minimum wages, it could potentially lower earnings) but also, more importantly, it didn't kill jobs. "These findings of no significant disemployment effect of minimum wages up to $13 significantly extend the minimum wage range studied in the previous literature," the authors wrote.
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