Must-Read: Jacob Vigdor et al.: Report on the Impact of Seattle’s Minimum Wage Ordinance

Must-Read: Jacob Vigdor et al.: Report on the Impact of Seattle’s Minimum Wage Ordinance:

The typical worker earning under $11/hour in Seattle… earned $11.14 per hour by the end of 2015, an increase from $9.96/hour at the time of passage….

We estimate that the minimum wage itself is responsible for a $0.73/hour average increase…. The minimum wage appears to have slightly reduced the employment rate of low-wage workers by about one percentage point…. Hours worked among low-wage Seattle workers have lagged behind regional trends, by roughly four hours per quarter (nineteen minutes per week), on average…. Seattle’slow-wage workers did see larger-than-usual paychecks… but most… of that increase was due to a strong local economy…. At most, 25% of the observed earnings gains… can be attributed to the minimum wage….

For businesses that rely heavily on low-wage labor, our estimates of the impact… are small and sensitive to modeling choices…. Moreover, if there has been any increase in business closings caused by the Minimum Wage Ordinance, it has been more than offset by an increase in business openings.