NFIB Hawaii State Director Melissa Pavlicek's guest commentary in Civil Beat.
In a guest commentary in Civil Beat, NFIB Hawaii State Director Melissa Pavlicek hauled in some nationally renowned experts on the minimum wage to make three points:
- “… evidence simply does not provide a strong case for using minimum wages to reduce poverty.”
- “… according to a recent study, 63% of workers who earn less than $9.50 per hour (well over the [federal] minimum wage of $7.25) are the second or third earner in their family and 43% of these workers live in households that earn over $50,000 per year. Thus, minimum wage earners are not a uniformly poor and struggling group; many are teenagers from middle class families and many more are sharing the burden of providing for their families, not carrying the load all by themselves.”
- “The best case against a higher minimum wage might be its irrelevance. Since the last increase in the federal minimum wage was fully phased-in in 2010, both the number and percentage of people earning it has fallen every year, as employees earn raises through their own initiative.”
The full guest commentary can be read here.
