Businesses in Washington DC are bracing for the economic pain from a proposal by the mayor to increase the minimum wage to $15.
“With the high cost of living and the expenses of everyday life, low wages create an invisible ceiling that prevents working families from getting their fair shot,” Muriel Bowser said. “In a city as prosperous as ours, we can level the playing field and make sure our residents are paid a good wage so fewer families are forced to leave.”
A survey of 100 DC-based businesses are less excited about her proposal. They’ve already faced higher costs from previous increases.
“Between 2014 and 2016, Washington, DC’s minimum wage has risen by nearly 40 percent, from $8.25 an hour in early 2014 up to $11.50 this summer,” the report, commissioned by the Employment Policies Institute, noted.
The majority of businesses had 30 or fewer workers, half of them from Laundromats, beauty shops, grocery stores, and other non-restaurant businesses.
In response to a higher minimum wage, only 38 percent said firing workers wasn’t likely. Half of them “planned to raise prices” to counteract higher costs.
“DC Council leaders should listen to the District’s small business owners, who are clearly saying that a dramatic minimum wage hike will actually hurt the exact people it’s intended to help,” Jeremy Adler, communications director for AR Squared, a conservative non-profit, said.
Some DC businesses are already adding surcharges in anticipation of the minimum wage increase.
Those businesses can’t expect voters to rally against the increase. Raising the minimum wage remains politically popular across party lines as a simple policy to help the working poor. Unfortunately, artificially increasing business costs doesn’t benefit everyone. Some workers won’t keep their jobs, consumers pay more, and small business owners struggle to remain profitable.
The march of the economically illogical, but well-intended, minimum wage has yet to find opposition among America’s largest cities.
