Posts tagged Minimum wage
Maine Considers Setting Minimum Rate of Pay for Rideshare Drivers on Platforms Like Uber and Lyft
January 21, 2026 // At the close of their testimony, the group suggests that lawmakers consider implementing a “portable benefits” program wherein drivers can accrue benefits across multiple platforms without “sacrificing their independent contractor status.” “We share the goal of ensuring that rideshare drivers can earn a fair living,” Chamber of Progress said. “But the evidence is clear: in city after city, minimum pay mandates have backfired by raising prices for riders, compressing earnings for experienced drivers, and degrading service for everyone.”
Ocean County Leaders Raise Concerns over NJDOL’s Proposed Gig Worker Rule
November 25, 2025 // “The State’s one-size-fits-all rule may hurt the very people it claims to protect; the independent workers, small businesses, and local economies that depend on flexibility and Ocean County’s local contractors, tradespeople, and entrepreneurs that rely on flexible work arrangements,” Ocean County Commissioner Jennifier Bacchione said on Monday. “The State should not be penalizing them for working independently.”
Education and Workforce Committee Passes 3 Bills to Expand Flexibility, Boost Earnings, and Hasten Back Pay
November 25, 2025 // On Thursday, the House Education and Workforce Committee passed three bills to boost flexibility, wages, and efficiency for workers. These three bills would modernize the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act to provide flexibility for workers, simplicity for tipped employees, and more efficient resolutions to payroll errors. Importantly, none of these provisions will cost taxpayers a single dime because they simply remove unnecessary barriers to flexibility and higher pay. In fact, at least one of the bills would likely save taxpayers from unnecessary administrative costs.
Mamdani’s Minimum-Wage Hike Will Hurt Young Workers Most
November 14, 2025 // The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 10 percent rise in the minimum wage reduces teen employment by about 0.7 percent. Using the same metric, raising New York City’s wage floor 82 percent would reduce Gotham’s teen employment by roughly 5 percent to 6 percent, on average. Teenagers who manage to keep their jobs will probably see fewer hours, meaning less job experience, fewer opportunities for mentoring, and slower wage growth in the future. Young people may have shot themselves in the foot, in other words, by supporting Zohran Mamdani. The soon-to-be-mayor’s “$30 by ’30” will make New York costlier, especially for the young, the least able to afford it.
Commentary: California’s Fast-Food Minimum Wage Hike Is Killing Jobs
November 13, 2025 // "On April 1, 2024, California raised its minimum wage from $16 to $20 per hour for fast-food workers employed at chains with more than 60 locations nationwide," Jeffrey Clemens, Olivia Edwards, and Jonathan Meer write in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that was first addressed by Reason's Peter Suderman in the November print issue. "Our median estimate suggests that California lost about 18,000 jobs that could have been retained if AB 1228 had not been passed."
Washington’s State Capital Just Voted Against Increasing the Minimum Wage, Unemployment
November 6, 2025 // Yes For Olympia Workers, whose top five donors are all unions, described the longer phase-in for medium employers as minimizing "the risk and costs to…small businesses." Olympians didn't buy it—and with good reason: Setting phase-in schedules based on headcount would have discouraged smaller businesses from hiring more workers. If the proposition had passed, a medium-sized firm with 500 employees could only justify hiring another employee if he were worth more than $2 million to the company—the combined yearly cost of his $20 per hour wage and the additional $2 per hour paid to the other 500 employees.
Lessons from D.C.: Why “$30 by ‘30” Wage Plan Could Leave Servers with Less
October 26, 2025 // Mr. Mamdani’s plan is being aligned with a renewed push by progressive New York legislators to eliminate the tipped-wage system, which would require restaurant workers to be paid the same minimum wage as all other tipped-wage positions. Legislation has been percolating in Albany in recent years that would phase out the tipped wage by 2028, with a prominent “Living Wage for All Coalition” now launching to guide the effort to fruition. Behind the coalition is the group One Fair Wage, which has been spearheading a systematic effort to eliminate the tipped-wage system in progressive jurisdictions across America. One Fair Wage has seen success in large cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., but as these policies take hold, the economic reality is starting to bite.
California’s Fast Food Minimum Wage Hike Cost the State 18,000 Jobs. That Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone.
October 23, 2025 // The trio looked at fast-food employment in California and found a decline of 2.64 percent between September 2023 and September 2024—six months before and after the law went into effect. During that same time period, fast-food employment in the rest of the United States slightly increased. Those different outcomes make it likely that the law caused fast-food businesses to hire fewer people, with a probable effect of lowering such employment 2.3 percent to 3.9 percent. At the middle of the range, that means about 18,000 fewer jobs in California.
UAW President Shawn Fain: “We Need More Than A Party – We Need A Movement”
October 14, 2025 // Fain, Speaking At A Center For Working-Class Politics & Jacobin Event, ‘Emphasized The Need For A Political Program That Addresses Workers’ Most Basic’ Issues - And ‘How A Broad Strike In 2028 Could Put Them Front & Center’
COMMENTARY Justin Owens: First Principles Series: Worker Freedom
September 17, 2025 // At the end of the day, it’s not government mandates to pay union dues or receive a certain wage that protect workers. It’s the negotiation that takes place between individual workers and employers that empowers workers to get paid what they earn and choose whether to keep those earnings or join a union to negotiate on their behalf. That’s why more and more people are relocating to Tennessee to live and work and fleeing states that refuse to protect their freedoms, like California, Illinois, and New York. If you really want to know which states protect workers, look no further than where they are voluntarily choosing to go.