Bill McMorris wages battle (pun intended) against those pushing for a mandatory $15 per hour minimum wage. His weapon of choice: a Washington Free Beacon article on a new study of the minimum wage proposal.
The $15 minimum wage backed by the Democratic Party will eliminate more than 7 million jobs, according to a new report.
Democratic delegates approved a party platform backing the $15 minimum wage on Monday. The proposed rate hike follows a multi-million dollar campaign by the politically influential Service Employees International Union.
It would more than double the federal minimum of $7.25 and effectively raise labor costs to more than $18 an hour per employee, after payroll taxes and other mandates. The move would force employers to seek offsets, which could hurt the prospects of workers, particularly inexperienced and low-skilled ones.
“Businesses would respond to these higher labor costs by reducing employment of affected workers by over one-sixth, thus eliminating approximately seven million full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 2021. Forcing employers to pay starting wages of $15 per hour would make many less skilled workers unemployable,” labor policy expert James Sherk wrote in a new report for the Heritage Foundation.
Shark is not the first person to voice concerns about the effect of the $15 wage on employment levels. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was the only primary candidate to oppose the $15 rate, backing an increase to $12 an hour after consulting with economic advisers and academic economists.
Clinton told a Democratic audience in Iowa that the $15 rate would cause “job loss and dislocation.” She instead backed a $12 minimum wage, which a pair of economists estimated would cut 800,000 jobs. She backtracked on that criticism in March, saying “there is no evidence that the minimum wage being increased costs jobs.”
Shark found that job losses would be unavoidable if the federal government forced businesses across the country to adopt uniform wages at $15 an hour regardless of regional differences in cost of living. He estimated that the wage hike would hit more than 30 percent of all workers. Not only would it make it more costly to hire new and entry level workers, but it would also drive wages up for more highly-skilled workers that earn above the minimum wage, but below the $15 hourly rate.
Shark called the Democrats proposal “unprecedented” in its scope.
