Monday is the first increase in three years as part of a 2014 law Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton signed after a Legislature controlled by his party passed it. The minimum wage’s first increase under the law was to $8 an hour in 2014. But not all minimum wage workers will get a raise.
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Ginger Jentzen, the Executive Director of 15 Now Minnesota, says her organization is “more than ready to take it to legal action”, after City Attorney Susan Segal issued a memo this week advising the council that the issue is “not a proper subject” for voters to decide. Raising the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour will put another $6,970 in that parent’s pocket, helping them earn more to provide for their family.
“This is good news for Minnesota’s lowest-wage workers and will help them earn more to provide for their families”, said Ken Peterson, commissioner, Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Would a minimum wage hike in Utah be a step toward economic justice or a death sentence for small, struggling businesses?
Seeing as minimum wage in North Dakota is still sitting on par with the national standard of $7.75 an hour, the $9.50 Minnesota wage can certainly sound appealing to Fargo locals looking to find work.
Your next paycheck could be bigger, thanks to changes in a state minimum wage law.
Beginning in 2018, the state wage will adjust with inflation to ensure incomes adjust to the cost of living. If two people worked making minimum wage, how do you live? The real test according to Moody’s is what would have happened without the 20 percent minimum wage increase.
The University of Washington was tasked with calculating the short-run effects of Seattle’s minimum wage increase.
A minimum wage of R8,000, as suggested by Pacsa, would put South Africa above Latvia at US$1.80, but still very low on the spectrum. But Gochnour says there are other policy tools to help low-wage workers and that a minimum wage increase is not the panacea to cure wage disparity. “Education is the most important thing we can do for low-wage workers”, Gochnour says.
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On a “cost benefit analysis” of the minimum wage, the researchers found, “the effects of dis-employment appear to be roughly offsetting the gain in hourly wage rates, leaving the earnings for the average low-wage worker unchanged”.
