Oops! New Study Shows That $15 Minimum Wage Hurts Workers

A surprising column from the Washington Post argues that liberals are learning the hard way that a $15 minimum wage hurts wage and job growth.

“When Seattle officials voted three years ago to incrementally boost the city’s minimum wage up to $15 an hour, they’d hoped to improve the lives of low-income workers,” the column by Max Ehrenfruend begins. “Yet according to a major new study that could force economists to reassess past research on the issue, the hike has had the opposite effect.”

The article focuses on the effects that Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has had on the growth of income and on job creation. A study conducted by the University of Washington revealed that the costs of the new wage policy to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one.

The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city. The study, published as a working paper Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer reviewed.

The University of Washington study also concluded that the policy cost the average low-wage worker an average of $125 a month.

David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the research called the University of Washington study “very credible.”

“This strikes me as a study that is likely to influence people,” Autor said. He added that it could be “sufficiently compelling in its design and statistical power that it can change minds.”

Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com