By Catherine Green.
We’ve looked at a lot of studies and reports about the impact of raising the minimum wage. We’ve considered what happened in other cities, heard from experts on lessons learned during San Francisco and Seattle‘s fights to raise the minimum wage and come to a number of conclusions about what could happen in San Diego.
The debate’s been on pause since the hike was thrust onto the ballot in 2016, but some research out of UCSD caught our eye nonetheless.
Jeffrey Clemens, an assistant professor at UCSD’s department of economics,collaborated with grad student Michael Wither and found “binding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers.”
Clemens told us on the show: “It looked like the fears that one has, the unintended consequences that one might worry about with the minimum wage, were realized. That is, we saw that the employment rates among the low-skilled workers in the states that were bound to increase their minimum wage rates actually went down quite a bit.”
VOSD Radio co-hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts talked with Clemens about his research and recommendations for San Diego voters. Later in the second half, Geoff Young from Padres Public weighs in on the team’s string of stellar acquisitions this week.