A new Bloomberg News report, which generally is thought of as a business and pro-business publication, shows that there is no increase in unemployment even if the minimum wage is doubled.
The Seattle suburb of SeaTac, Washington where the international airport is located decided in November to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour. That was an increase in the minimum wage by 60 percent. Although individual businesses and business associations worked to defeat the increase in the minimum wage, there was no decrease in employment. Instead businesses found other ways to offset the wage increase, including by adding an insignificant increase or “‘living-wage surcharge’ to prices.”
The report from this publication is powerful ammunition for us and our movement for economic justice in the struggle to follow the President’s call to raise the federal minimum wage.
In fact, Seattle Democratic Mayor Ed Murray is now calling for an increase in the Seattle minimum wage to $15 an hour.
