New Research (See All)

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  The State Employment Impact of a $15 Minimum Wage

  October 2020

  The crisis created by the spread of COVID-19 and subsequent shutdowns has severely affected employees and businesses, regardless of industry. The U.S. faced a 14.7 percent unemployment rate at its peak in April 2020, as a direct result of the virus outbreak, and although it has declined to 8.4 percent in the month of August, the nation’s businesses and employees still face a long road [...]
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  Raising the Tipped Wage Reduces Opportunity for Tipped Workers

  November 2019

  Over five million Americans currently work in restaurants as tipped servers or bartenders in restaurants. By one estimate, nearly one in three American workers worked in the restaurant industry as their first job. Despite the industry’s popularity as a place of employment, it has been the subject in recent years of a well-funded attack by a labor group called the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC). ROC [...]
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  Do Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Crime?

  March 2019

  Advocates have recently claimed that minimum wage increases may actually make our neighborhoods safer.  By raising workers’ wages, the argument goes, legitimate labor market work will be more attractive to potential criminals and crime will fall. But what about those who lose their jobs?  My new research, co-authored with Zachary Fone of the University of New Hampshire and Resul Cesur of the University of Connecticut, finds [...]