New York minimum wage hike could lead to almost 600000 jobs lost

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of American Action Forum and lead author of the report, said the minimum wage increase would not necessarily help people out of poverty but would more likely have an adverse affect on the job market by creating “slower growth, the inability to expand businesses, the inability to start new businesses”.

The coalition, which is sending a formal letter of opposition to Cuomo on Wednesday, says the Democratic governor’s proposal to gradually phase in a $15 minimum wage will burden businesses and force them to raise prices. That includes a potential loss of 11,300 to 36,900 jobs based on previous studies that provided low-, medium- and high-impact models for the new research.

The current minimum wage is $8.75 an hour.

“New York has zero tolerance for worker exploitation and those who seek to deny a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”, Gov. Cuomo said in a statement.

The Empire Center, which wrote the forward to the report, is a conservative government watchdog group focusing on holding down taxes and spending in state and local government.

Last month, Cuomo was joined by Vice President Biden at an event to begin a campaign for an industrywide, statewide increase to $15, which would, under his proposal, take full effect at the end of 2018 in New York City and in July 2021 for the rest of New York.

The 432,500 figure was one of three contained in the report, with a low impact of 200,000 and high impact of 588,800 lost jobs across the state. The study noted many minimum wage jobs are in restaurants and small business already operating on thin profit margins.

Advocates for a $15 minimum wage has dismissed the criticism from business groups, saying that a higher wage would improve the economy by giving people more money to spend – which in turn would help companies.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday says 70 percent of respondents say they back the higher wage for employees at chain fast-food eateries.

This may have come as a surprise to a few, especially in a city that is generally ranked among the most liberal in the country: 46.9 percent of voters in the city are registered Democrats, and only 13.9 percent are registered Republicans.

The school group estimated that the fiscal impact of a $15-per-hour minimum wage would be at least $276 million.

Those in favor of a wage increase said this study doesn’t make any sense. He said in other parts of upstate, the median wage is around $17 and is below $16 in many others.