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THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Every Northeast and Middle Atlantic state other than Pennsylvania regularly has increased its minimum wage since 2012, as Pennsylvania lawmakers trot out the disproven canard that a higher minimum wage is the working person’s worst enemy. Now a series of studies on the wave of minimum wage increases, several of them using Pennsylvania’s appalling $7.25 hourly minimum wage as the basis for comparison, have found that the increases do not broadly reduce employment or work hours, or provide an advantage to neighboring jurisdictions with lower wages. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently found that minimum wage increases to $12 an hour in New York counties that border Pennsylvania did not reduce employment in the New York counties or increase employment in adjacent Pennsylvania counties mired at the $7.25 minimum wage. Upshot, the statistical analysis department of The New York Times, conducted its own analysis zeroing on the hospitality and restaurant industries, and found similar results. Wages in Delaware County, New York, for example, increased by 30% since 2012, driven partially by a higher minimum wage, as employment grew on pace with the rest of the country. In adjacent Wayne County, Pennsylvania, wages increased by 14% since 2012 as employment increased at a comparable pace. Likewise, wages increased by 11% in Tioga County over the period and by 30% in adjacent Steuben County, New York. Similar numbers surfaced in Erie County and adjacent Chautauga County, New York. A broader study of seven states, by economist Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that minimum wage increases in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York and Maine did not produce significant job displacement. “Up to a point, minimum wages can be absorbed without any substantial changes in employment,” Dube concluded. Part of the reason for that is millions of workers have more money to spend, which helps to mitigate any price increases that might result from higher wages. There are individual exceptions to the broad trends. But the overall consensus that Pennsylvania lawmakers should absorb is that they should increase minimum wages to help make low-income workers more prosperous rather than lab rats to test the smarter policies of nearby states.