Category Archives: Press

By C. Nicole Mason “American workers, not big businesses, have been the biggest losers in a sagging economy and sluggish recovery. Stagnant job growth, coupled with record high employment, has forced many individuals and families to do more with less — including on the wage front.” Read more

By Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen As soon as President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour in his State of the Union address last week, you could see Speaker John Boehner, seated behind the president, uttering his religious mantra: “Job killer.” And even if you couldn’t read […]

By Matt Miller Originally appeared in The Washington Post Want more proof that the boundaries of debate in American politics are absurdly narrow and unequal to our challenges? Then ask yourself why an overdue, common-sense increase in the minimum wage is not on the agenda of either the president or the “new and improved” Republican […]

During the 2008 campaign, presidential candidate Barack Obama made a pledge to raise the minimum wage

On July 24, three years will have passed since the last increase in the federal minimum wage. It’s currently stuck at $7.25 an hour, or just over $15,000 a year for a full-time worker. My colleagues at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have made a number of comparisons to show just how low […]

If you’ve ever had a conversation about the minimum wage with friends and family, you invariably hear an argument about how raising it would hurt small businesses. There is compelling academic research that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t dramatically impact employment levels, but a new study released today underscores another important point—most people earning minimum […]