EPI Research (Page 2 )

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  A Survey of US Economists on a $15 Federal Minimum Wage

  April 2022

  Across the nation, lawmakers continue to grapple with the viability and impact of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The debate continues to be heated and some cities have already enacted increases they believe will benefit workers. While the impact of these increases is becoming more clear, recent surveys of businesses, franchises and other groups confirm that such minimum wage raises actually harms…
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  The Case for the Tip Credit: From Workers, Employers, and Research

  February 2021

  The tipping system provides substantial earning opportunities for workers across many industries, especially restaurant servers and bartenders – well beyond the current minimum wage, and even beyond the proposed $15 minimum wage. Saving the tip credit is a worker-organized, bipartisan issue. Thousands of tipped workers across the country have pushed to save the tip credit, against the infringement of outside interests and activists. Yet, interest…
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  Tipped Workers, Minimum Wage Workers, and Poverty: Analyzing the Redistributive Impact of Eliminating Tip Credits

  February 2021

  Key takeaway: According to a new study by economists from the University of California, Irvine, tipped workers are significantly less likely to be poor than are standard minimum wage earners. Tipped workers, many of whom are in the food and beverage service industry, have lower statutory minimum wages than other workers (under federal and most state laws). However, the lower minimum wages for tipped workers…
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  The National Impact of a $15 Minimum Wage: Over 2 Million Jobs Lost

  January 2021

  President Biden and recent legislation have proposed more than doubling the federal minimum wage to $15, and raising the separate federal tipped minimum wage by as much as 600 percent. Rather than providing relief from the pandemic, the best economic evidence shows this proposal would worsen its consequences. This analysis is based on a 2019 methodology developed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimated…
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  The State Employment Impact of a $15 Minimum Wage: January 2021

  January 2021

  The crisis created by the spread of COVID-19 and subsequent shutdowns has severely affected America’s employees and businesses, and state economies still face a long road to full recovery to pre-pandemic activity levels. As part of his pandemic relief plan, President Biden has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $15 and eliminating the tip credit—a plan that is estimated to cost over 2 million…
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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…