Sunday on New York AM 970 radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta criticized the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Acosta argued the $15 minimum wage mark across the country would result “cost us jobs” outside of the high cost of living states like California and New York.
“The $15 minimum wage is already in place in some places like New York and in Washington state. The studies show that when those wages went into effect, some jobs were lost,” Acosta told host John Catsimatidis. “I’ll tell you what worries me even more: In high-cost areas of the United States, people make more money because they need to make more money to live. And in so many states, particularly the east and west coast, those states have opted to raise the minimum wage. But there are a number of states in America that don’t have the same costs that New York City and San Francisco have. They’re lower-cost states. And many of those states have not chosen to raise their minimum wage.”
He continued, “As we look at this discussion of a $15 minimum wage, the question is this: Should the states that are higher cost-of-living states be able to impose their cost structure on the lower cost-of-living states, knowing that it will cost a lot of jobs in those states? … We want to grow jobs. We don’t want to give up jobs. A $15 minimum wage is going to cost us jobs.”
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