The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to raise minimum wage for the first time in a decade and passage in the Senate was seen as likely.
A spokesman for Rep. George Miller, D-Ca., who sponsored the bill, said it was likely to pass the Senate shortly and land on President George W. Bush’s desk.
The bill provides for an increase from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour over two years. Hundreds of thousands of lower-rank workers will be boosted across the country, but an increase in the federal minimum wage will have “zero” impact on the greater Washington, D.C. area, according Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University’s Center For Regional Analysis.
“We won’t be able to measure it,” Fuller said. “It will have an impact on the people who benefit from it, but there are so few of these workers who work at the minimum wage that it will not register in the regional economy.”
Fuller said of the 3.8 million jobs in the area, “I’d be surprised if it was one percent” who receive minimum wage.
Though not as extreme as Fuller’s stance, the general consensus across the region is that a minimum wage hike will have a minimal impact.
“We have a larger percentage of the workforce in the professional fields than other major metro areas,” said Marie Tibor, Greater Washington Initiative and the Washington Board of Trade vice president of communications. “Number two, those individuals who are in the minimum wage area, generally are making above the minimum wage since our large employers in the region recognize that the cost of living is higher than in some smaller communities across the country.”
Fuller said those who could be impacted by the move are “primarily service workers,” including hotel staff.
Edgar Rivera, the affordable housing campaign coordinator for Alexandria, Va.-based Tenants and Workers United, which assists immigrants, supports a minimum wage increase, but said the benefit to immigrants, illegal or documented, is “not going to be great” because the cost of living is so high.
Rivera welcomes a minimum wage hike, but he works with some people who have a more pressing issue “they are not being paid at all. We have a lot of people who work and don’t get paid,” he said.
