Flaws cast doubt on new study’s gloomy view of minimum wages
Poor methodology means almost half of Seattle’s low-income workers were left out of survey
A study released in June by the University of Washington on Seattle’s effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour has received a lot of attention. So what does the new study tell us? Less than you might think. That is the short version; the longer version follows. Because of other obligations, I have only now got around to reading the study. In a nutshell, it said the increases hurt the low-paid workers who were supposed to benefit. Although the University of Washington study grabbed all of the headlines, a study on Seattle’s labour market released a few days before quietly reached the opposite conclusion. That study was carried out by the Institute for Research on Labour and Employment, which is based at the University of California-Berkeley. One major caveat is that neither of the new reports has been peer reviewed; the data are not public. Once released, people who are much better than I am at statistical analysis will provide a better assessment of the methodology and data s...
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