Arlington, Va. – Today, the Employment Policies Institute released a new report detailing the estimated job loss impacts of H.B. 1500, which would raise the state minimum wage to $15 per hour, passed by the House of Representatives today. The bill would also raise the wage for tipped employees more than 200 percent up to $9 per hour. The report finds this proposal would result in roughly 86,000 jobs lost statewide – including nearly 32,000 jobs lost by tipped restaurant employees.

The analysis, conducted by economists Drs. William Even (Miami University) and David Macpherson (Trinity University), utilizes nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office methods to estimate future employment trends and the job loss impact in Pennsylvania.

Key findings include:

• 85,779 jobs lost statewide by 2026;
• Nearly half of lost jobs would be in restaurants and bars;
• It would cost 31,923 tipped employees their jobs, meaning 1 out of every 4 Pennsylvania tipped employees would lose their jobs by 2026.

For more data on the impacts of the proposal by demographic and industry, see the report here. For more information on how tip credits work and consequences of raising tipped minimum wages, see our tip credit primer here.

EPI’s director of research, Rebekah Paxton, commented on the report’s findings: 

“HB 1500 ignores the consequences a doubled minimum wage and quadrupled tipped minimum wage will have on the state. New data from the Employment Policies Institute confirms decades of economic research. While higher hourly wages may rise, tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians, especially tipped employees, will be out of work.”