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"employment overall did not change" "The number of workers making over $19 an hour increased abruptly" This is the bad news.
This is the bad news.
At my local grocer in Manhattan, some prices suddenly went up 25% or more on a number of items and I was told by a senior manager of the food store chain (I was calling to complain about something else and inquired) who said it was because of the first minimum wage increase for not only the stores but the distributors which are also located in NY State.
NY State passed a minimum wage from $11 to $13 to $15 by 2018 or so. The current rate is $11.
A lot of people receive food stamps and/or are on a fixed income (think retirees) and this puts a substantial increase in their cost of living. This is only the first hike. One can only imagine how much higher food prices will be when it finally goes up to $15.
Meanwhile neither NY State nor NY City has dealt with the real problem which is the high cost of living which is very hard on low-wage people in particular because of zoning density restrictions and overuse of historic landmark status. These zoning density restrictions are a huge windfall for wealthy landlords as they make renters pay far, far higher rates for apartments than they would in an efficient market. It is a huge regressive "tax" that makes landlords like Donald Trump far wealthier than they otherwise would be in a efficient, functioning real estate market.
Jeff Bezos owns this newspaper and has a deeply vested interest in keeping wages low.
Wait, so are places like corporate McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, etc excluded from the study? ...What about grocery stores? ...Clothing stores, mall shops, etc?
It seems like failing to include those would be a major bias in the effects of the study.
Edit:
"Indeed, while employment overall did not change, that was because employers replaced low-paying jobs with high-paying jobs. The number of workers making over $19 an hour increased abruptly, while the number making less than that amount declined, Vigdor and his colleagues found.
Vigdor said that restaurateurs in Seattle -- along with other employers -- responded to the minimum wage by hiring more skilled and experienced workers, who might be able to produce more revenue for their firms in the same amount of time."
Oh, so their "loss" to low-paying jobs can be explained by a rise in jobs paying above their cutoff for "low-paying"?
I have a lot of questions about this study; particularly since it doesn't agree with the other study mentioned in the article (with this study using "new" methods and the other using more "traditional" methods).
"employment overall did not change" "The number of workers making over $19 an hour increased abruptly" This is the bad news.
No, this is the bad news: > The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city.
"No thanks, I prefer to keep my skills low, so the politicians have screwed me."
Seems like time would be better spent ensuring that everyone has food, housing, and healthcare no matter what they do (easier said than done, of course).