Raising the Minimum Wage
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George F. Will ["The Right Minimum Wage," op-ed, Jan 4] greatly underestimated the number of workers who would benefit from the higher minimum wage under consideration by Congress. He implied that only those earning the current minimum of $5.15 per hour would benefit: fewer than 500,000 workers. In fact, the proposed new minimum wage would benefit any worker earning between $5.15 and $7.25, the proposed new federal minimum.
Our research shows that 5.6 million low-wage workers have earnings that place them in the affected range and thus would directly benefit from the increase. These workers are mostly adults (70 percent are 20 or older; half are 26 or up). About 40 percent of them work full time, and a similar share work more than 20 hours per week. While many are not officially poor, their incomes typically place them within the bottom two-fifths of the income scale (less than $36,000).
In other words, millions of American workers need and deserve this long-awaited raise.
JARED BERNSTEIN
Senior Economist
Economic Policy Institute
Washington
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