Dec.27

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Nearly 10 Million Americans Will Get Raises Due to Minimum Wage Increases

On January 1, new minimum wage laws will take effect in 22 states, along with 38 cities and counties. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has crunched the numbers, and projects that 9.9 million workers will take home bigger paychecks as a result.

A few of the more specific findings from EPI:

• The increases are mostly happening in blue states, counties, and cities, as you might guess. However, there are some states with competitive elections that are included, among them Alaska, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Vermont.
  
  
• Considerably more than half the workers who benefit (57.9%) will be women.
  
  
• Black, and particularly Latino, workers will also benefit disproportionately to their participation in the workforce. The former are 9% of the workers in the wage-raising states but will receive 11.1% of the benefits; for the latter it is 19.6% and 37.9%.
  
  
• About 25.8% of the benefits will go to parents in working families.
  
  
• The biggest increase, $2/hour, is in Hawaii. The smallest, 23 cents an hour, is in Michigan. However, there is a pending case before the Michigan Supreme Court that could increase that a fair bit.

Predicting how changes in the economy will affect elections is something of a fool's errand. But we pass this along because "my wages aren't keeping up with inflation" is clearly something that is hurting the Democrats, and the increase in minimum wages, while not enormous, is going to be felt substantially by groups the blue team really needs in 2024. (Z)