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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Huckleberries Online

PC: Hiking Minimum Wage Will Hurt

Item: Crabb: Boosting the minimum wage next month will hurt, not help/Northwest Nazarene University.

More Info: In July, the federal minimum wage will to increase to $7.25 per hour from the current $6.55, a 10.6 percent increase. This change in the law was enacted in the spring 2007 when the economy was strong, growing in real terms at a 4.7 percent annual rate with unemployment at only 4.5 percent. The most recent reports say the economy today is declining in real terms at a 5.7 percent annual rate with unemployment at 9.4 percent. Furthermore, the national jobless rate for teenagers today is 22.7 percent. It is just these teenagers who will find it more difficult to land a job when employers must increase their base rate of pay more than 10 percent.

Question: Will the increase in the federal minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 help or hurt this country?



D.F. Oliveria
D.F. (Dave) Oliveria joined The Spokesman-Review in 1984. He currently is a columnist and compiles the Huckleberries Online blog and writes about North Idaho in his Huckleberries column.

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