Socialist council member Kshama Sawant, ruining it for the rest of us.
If Seattle businesses are closing up shop in response to our $15 minimum wage, you wouldn’t know it from our falling unemployment rate:
King County’s unemployment rate reach[ed] a low not seen since April 2008, data released Tuesday by the state Employment Security Department show.
King County’s unemployment rate in April was 3.3 percent, compared to 4 percent in March and 4.1 percent in April 2014.
Okay, monthly unemployment data is not seasonally adjusted, so the rate will surely rise in May and June as college and high school graduates join the workforce (like it does every year). And of course, it will take years—maybe even a couple decades—to fully suss out the employment effect (if any) of Seattle’s phased-in $15 minimum wage.
But again, if employers are cutting back on hiring in anticipation of rising labor costs—like $15 critics insist a rationally self-interested employer would—you wouldn’t know it from our falling unemployment rate.
But, you know, one crappy chain pizza place closed, so screw the data.
[Cross-posted to Civic Skunkworks]
Seattle has so many billionaires the average wage here probably is closer to $1,000/hr, so asking for $15/hr isn’t asking for much. An average $15/hr worker is paying 60% of his/her salary for Seattle’s average rent.
According to MIT, a living wage for 1 adult in Seattle is $11.20/hr, but their estimate is based on housing costs of $9,252/yr. or $771/mo. Does anyone reading this know where in Seattle you can rent anything for $771/mo.? You probably can’t get student housing in a U. District flophouse for that.
http://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/53033
Add a child and the living wage requirement goes up to $23.86/hr.; lots of other interesting facts and figures in this link.
@3, $771 would be about 1/2 the rent on a 2 bedroom house or apt. Or is a “living wage” supposed to guarantee that someone doesn’t need to suffer the indignity of a roommate or that they are guaranteed to live in Capital Hill, Downtown, or Queen Anne? Even a cursory quick look at Craigslist shows many options significantly better than “student housing ” or a “UW flop house”
http://seattle.craigslist.org/.....38729.html
http://seattle.craigslist.org/.....59311.html
http://seattle.craigslist.org/.....05210.html
Using this type of logic, one might suggest that the impending $15 minimum wage kept King County’s unemployment rate from falling as precipitously as Snohomish County’s unemployment rate fell in the past year.
KC vs last year: 0.8% lower.
Snoh vs last year: 1.1% lower.
We know that San Francisco’s own city analysts (slide 12)
http://sfcontroller.org/Module.....entid=5495
predict that 2% of private-sector jobs will be lost because of the higher minimum wage in that city.
Perhaps the 0.3% difference between KC and Snoh is just the down payment on a similar downside.
You employees of a billionaire are working awfully hard to demonstrate the absence of a downside. Would be nice if you are proved correct, but this is simply childish logic, Goldy.
“We know that San Francisco’s own city analysts (slide 12)”
A radiologist who is probably pulling in $500K/year likes to whine his ass off on blogs about the evils of those at the bottom of the economic ladder making a living fucking wage.
“In his classic book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman describes the American Medical Association (AMA) as the “strongest trade union in the United States” and documents the ways in which the AMA vigorously restricts competition.”
http://wallstreetpit.com/5769-.....s-so-high/
@6 “A radiologist who is probably pulling in $500K/year likes to whine his ass off on blogs about the evils of those at the bottom of the economic ladder making a living fucking wage.”
He also likes to call lawyers not making $500K/year “unsuccessful.” P.S., let’s sic Scott Walker on the AMA.
re the sloppy one — What’s the point of full-time employment if you can’t pay your bills with wages earned? Do you get that?
@5 Well, if you want to do math, the real comparison between King and Snohomish is that King’s unemployment rate fell by 20 percent, year-to-year, while Snohomish’s fell by 23 percent. But considering that these are just monthly, non-seasonally adjusted preliminary numbers, I don’t know that this difference is significant.
Also, the closer you are to zero unemployment, the less room there is for unemployment numbers to go down. King is already below what most neo-classical economists consider “full employment.” How much further can we expect this rate to fall?
“He also likes to call lawyers not making $500K/year “unsuccessful.”
There should be little wonder where, by Bob’s measure of success, that leaves Dr. Albert Schweitzer.
“Well, if you want to do math”
Yes, I’m sure our union-hating, rich radiologist, he who displays nothing but contempt and scorn for those Americans who work hard and earn less than a living wage, would love nothing better than for you to do some math and quibble with him over a percentage point or two.
Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces.
The push to include an exception to the mandated wage increase for companies that let their employees collectively bargain was the latest unexpected detour as the city nears approval of its landmark legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020.
http://www.latimes.com/local/l.....story.html
Lessee, by applying logic common to this thread, we might infer that LA labor leaders don’t want their area’s unemployment rate to fall too far, and so they are creating a carve-out to preserve a minimum level of unemployment.
You know, so employers will have some applicants to choose from.
Either that, or they are recognizing there will be losers, a lot of them the lowest-paid in certain sectors of the economy. Those are the ones people around here don’t like to talk about. Not much, anyway.
@ 9
I agree that the unemployment rate – locally, that is – is falling to a level from which it can’t fall much further.
So that supports your contention that an ‘experiment’, as you called the minimum-wage increase elsewhere, is a reasonable thing to try in Seattle. Hey, if it’s going to work anywhere it’s going to work here, because look how good we’re doing already. Employers can absorb it, or most of them, anyway. So I agree that Seattle is the place to try it.
What simultaneously argues against your contention is that same low unemployment rate. A low unemployment rate reduces the number of job applicants, and the ones who are applying then have pricing power and can hold out for higher wages. So that natural effect should boost wages in and of itself. Or so the classical theory goes.
But if we’re going to ignore classical theory and artificially boost wages, of all places Seattle can best handle it. Places in eastern WA, with high unemployment rates (I’ve commented on that elsewhere on this site)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...../24366329/
like Longview and Yakima, cannot. It’s why I commented that it’s unfair of you to mock GOP representatives of those poorly-performing economic areas, because if they were to vote in favor of a large increase in their minimum wage they would be voting in favor of a hit to employment their economy can’t take.
All I am trying to do is to get HA types and others to address the downside. Because there certainly will be one. See the LAT piece I linked to, above.
Thanks for the response, BTW.
@12 The minimum wage bill Dems were pushing in Olympia—and which would be enough to head off a more aggressive measure at the ballot—would have raised the state minimum wage to $12 by 2019. Assuming 2% inflation, the state’s current $9.47/hour minimum wage would hit $10.25 by 2019.
So in effect, $12 by 2019 represents only a 15 percent hike in the wage in real dollars, over four years. Hardly a job-killing burden, and well below Seattle’s $15 in 2017 dollars.
@ 13
I get 17% over four years, in real dollars.
As to whether it’s job-killing, I would say that’s something that is better addressed by people who live in a community now faced with 8.8% unemployment than people who live in a community in which it may be lower than 3.3%.
Or, perhaps, by their elected representatives.
Again, thanks for engaging.