New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is calling for the Legislature to pass a $15 minimum wage before the holidays to build a “fair economy.” In an op-ed for ROI-NJ, NFIB’s New Jersey State Director Laurie Ehlbeck explains why that isn’t fair for small businesses or for many employees. Employers that hire entry-level and inexperienced workers will have to eliminate jobs.
Ehlbeck explains that Seattle raised the minimum wage three years ago by increments, and it will reach $15 an hour by 2021. The city commissioned annual studies on the impact. The third report, just released in October, shows that, while pay for low-wage workers rose $8 to $12 a week, all of those gains were for workers who had work experience. Less-experienced workers saw no significant change in weekly pay.
A quarter of those increased earnings can be attributed to experienced workers making up for lost hours in Seattle at other jobs outside city limits. While there was an 8 percent reduction in job turnover, there was also a significant reduction in the rate of new employees into the workforce. In other words, job opportunities for those with no skills and no experience disappeared.
“As an advocate for thousands of small businesses in the New Jersey, I can tell you that those in the retail, hospitality, food service and recreation sectors will be hard-pressed by a steep rise in the minimum wage,” Ehlbeck said. “Operating on narrow profits, those businesses owners must decide if they can pass on the cost to customers, or if their customer base would disappear—a more likely scenario. The only other option is to reduce employee hours and cut jobs.”
You can read the full guest column in ROI-NJ by clicking here.
