Cawacko, I believe Evince and all of us others are perusing the same CBO report of the same study. The linkage address he provided,
http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/44995-MinimumWage.pdf is superior to mine. That report states
“For this report, CBO examined the effects on employment and family income of two options for increasing the federal minimum wage (see the figure below):
. A “$10.10 option” would increase the federal minimum wage from its current rate of $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour in three steps—in 2014, 2015, and 2016. After reaching $10.10 in 2016, the minimum wage would be adjusted annually for inflation as measured by the consumer price index.
• . A “$9.00 option” would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $9.00 per hour in two steps—in 2015 and 2016. After reaching $9.00 in 2016, the minimum wage would not be subsequently adjusted for inflation. “
•
I prefer the $2.75 rate increase over a period of 2 years with purchasing power retention thereafter as superior to a lesser increase with no purchasing power retention. My references to the report are all in regard to the option that I prefer. Within a prior post I quoted from a paragraph entitled “Effects of the $10.10 Option on Employment and Income”.
Apparently Evince quoted from the portion of the report entitled “Family Income” but it’s difficult to determine if he didn’t also include other portions of the report. What he posted treats the two different proposals as being consequentially equal. The differences between the proposals are not simply their rates two years after their enactment; one proposal retains the minimum purchasing power and the second would not do so.
Almost all of the lines he posted are less applicable or not applicable or contrary to the higher minimum rate proposal that also retains the minimum wage’s purchasing power.
I excerpted this from the “Effects of the Options on Employment” portion of the report:
“Those job losses among low-wage workers would be concentrated among people who are projected to earn less than $10.10 an hour under current law. Some workers who would otherwise have earned between $10.10 and $11.50 per hour would also see an increase in their wages, which would tend to reduce their employment as well, CBO estimates. However, some firms might hire more of those workers as substitutes for the lower-paid workers whose wages had been increased.
Those two factors would probably be roughly offsetting, CBO anticipates, so the number of such workers who were employed would probably not change significantly.
The overall reduction in employment could be smaller or larger than CBO’s central estimate. In CBO’s assessment, there is about a two-thirds chance that the effect of the $10.10 option would be in the range between a very slight decrease in employment and a decrease of 1.0 million workers; thus, there is a one-third chance that the effect would be either above or below that range.
The most important factors contributing to the width of the range are uncertainty about the growth of wages over the next three years (which influences the number of workers who would be affected by the minimum-wage increase, as well as the extent to which the increase would raise their wages) and uncertainty about the responsiveness of employment to an increase in wages. For example, if wage growth under current law was slower than CBO projects, implementing the increase would result in more people with increased wages and a greater reduction in employment than CBO’s central estimate suggests”.
Respectfully, Supposn
