EPI Research

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  Survey of US Economists on a $15 Federal Minimum Wage

  March 2019

  Across the nation, lawmakers continue to grapple with the viability and impact of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The debate has become heated and some states and cities have already enacted increases they believe will benefit workers. While the true impact of these increases is still being discovered, recent surveys of businesses, franchises and other groups suggest that such minimum wage raises may actually harm workers, […]
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  The Impact of a $15 Minimum Wage: Up to 2 Million Jobs Lost

  January 2019

  Speaker Nancy Pelosi boasted that a $15 minimum wage would pass “in the first 100 hours” of a new Democratic-controlled Congress. It might be good politics, but is a $15 minimum wage good economics? This month, the Employment Policies Institute released its first-ever book on the $15 minimum wage, “Fighting $15: An Evaluation of the Evidence and a Case for Caution.” This policy brief summarizes […]
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  Minimum Wages and the Business Cycle: Does a Wage Hike Hurt More in a Weak Economy?

  January 2014 • Dr. Joseph Sabia

  In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama called for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. The following month, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative George Miller (D-CA) introduced a bill to raise the wage even higher to $10.10 an hour. One year later, President Obama as well as Congressmen Harkin and Miller have agreed on the $10.10 figure. […]
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  What’s Best At Reducing Poverty? An Examination of the Effectiveness of the 2007 Minimum Wage Increase

  March 2010

  On July 24th, 2009, the federal minimum was raised to $7.25 an hour. This was the last of three 70-cent increases which began in July 2007, and were mandated by the Fair Minimum Wage Act (FMWA) of 2007. In an op-ed published that same day, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis praised the increase for helping “put between 3 million and 5 million Americans a step[…]
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  Rotten ACORN: America’s Bad Seed

  July 2006

  New information as of July 9, 2008: The New York Times published an explosive exposé detailing how the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) covered up nearly $1 million in embezzled funds by its founder’s brother. Read our statement about ACORN’s long history of fraud and corruption. ACORN says it is a community group, but it is really a multi-million-dollar, multinational conglomerate. Its political[…]
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  Santa Fe’s Living Wage and the Labor Market

  September 2005

  In October, voters in Albuquerque, New Mexico will decide on a minimum wage of $7.50 an hour for all employees in the city. If passed, Albuquerque will become the fourth city in America to institute a wage floor above the federal level . The first city to do so was neighboring Santa Fe, New Mexico which implemented an $8.50 minimum wage in June,[…]