Politics

DC votes for highest minimum wage of any state in the country

Christopher Bedford Former Editor in Chief, The Daily Caller News Foundation
Font Size:

The Washington, D.C. City Council voted unanimously to raise the city’s minimum wage by 40 percent to $11.50 Tuesday — well above the federally mandated $7.25.

The move came while D.C.’s unemployment rate hovers uncomfortably at nearly 9 percent — 1.5 points above reported national-unemployment levels.

In collaboration with neighboring Maryland counties, which passed similar measures in the past 30 days, the level puts the area above any other state’s minimum wage in the country, The Washington Post reports.

While the hike may help some minimum-wage workers in the district, businesses unable to afford the hike will be forced to lay off employees, likely adding to the already high unemployment in Washington. Maryland, for example, has a reported unemployment rate of 6.7 percent, while Virginia has an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent. Virginia did not collaborate with the D.C. City Council’s efforts.

The move is poised to harm teen unemployment especially. Teenagers, who often have fewer skills and so work in minimum-wage jobs, have been hit especially hard by the recession. The national unemployment level for black teenagers, for example, at 36 percent. A little over half of D.C.’s population is black.

“Study after study reveals that there are long-term career benefits to working as a teenager and that these benefits go well beyond the pay that these youths receive,” according to a 2009 op-ed in the The Wall Street Journal.

“A study by researchers at Stanford found that those who do not work as teenagers have lower long-term wages and employability even after 10 years,” the op-ed continued.

“While it may not sound like a huge deal to raise the minimum wage by a buck, that dollar, multiplied thousands of times, adds to up to huge costs for businesses,” free market organization Generation Opportunity posted in August. “Even if businesses wanted to reward diligent, hard working young people, a higher minimum wage may reduce the amount of bonuses or raises that a business can give out because money is being used elsewhere.”

DC Brau, the first brewery to open in the district in decades, had collaborated with the city to raise the minimum wage to $10.25, The Post reports — 24 percent increase above current levels and a full $1.25 below what the council approved.

Though the vote is not yet final in D.C., with unanimous support it is likely that Democratic Mayor Vincent Gray will approve the measure next year. Gray has said he preferred a more modest raise to $10 an hour — a 15 percent increase.

Follow Bedford on Twitter and Facebook

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel