Even those that currently pay more than the prevailing minimum wage in their locations, such as Amazon, which rolled out a $15 minimum hourly wage in 2018, would probably have to raise that wage floor in order to keep their recruitment and retention competitive.
An August survey found that 72 percent of Americans — including 62 percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats — said the minimum wage should be high enough to keep full-time workers above the poverty line.
“Predictions that higher minimum wages would lead to job elimination are highly exaggerated, at best,†Milkman said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined in a 2019 report that raising the hourly minimum wage incrementally to $15 by 2025 could shave, at the median, 1.3 million jobs from the labor force, but would also lift 1.3 million people out of poverty and contribute an additional $8 billion to the aggregate household income of these familiesThe conventional wisdom is that higher minimum wages motivates companies with large low-wage workforces to invest in equipment and robotics to facilitate more automation — investments many are actually making now in order to cut down on person-to-person contact and inhibit the transmission of Covid-19