{"id":521499,"date":"2025-10-23T06:17:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/521499\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T06:17:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:17:41","slug":"data-show-15-minimum-wage-tied-to-restaurant-job-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/521499\/","title":{"rendered":"Data show $15 minimum wage tied to restaurant job losses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research shows just how harmful SQ 832 would be for the very people it claims to help. A 2022 paper (\u201cState Impacts of a $15 Tipped Minimum Wage<\/a>\u201d) published by the Employment Policies Institute estimates that a $15 minimum wage would reduce restaurant employment in Oklahoma by 14.1 percent\u2014roughly 12,300 jobs.<\/p>\n

Raising the minimum wage has also been shown to drive price increases, particularly for groceries and at restaurants. Industries that operate on razor-thin margins typically have only two options when labor costs rise by government mandate: raise prices or cut staff. In most cases, it\u2019s a mix of both. However, after the steep price increases of recent years, many restaurant operators may have reached a\u00a0breaking point<\/a> where further price hikes could start to drive away customers.<\/p>\n

Publicly available data also show how difficult it has been for states that regularly raise their minimum wages to keep the cost of living from rising alongside them. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis publishes a cost-of-living index dating back to 2008. The two states where prices have increased the most relative to the national average are Oregon and Washington\u2014both of which have steadily raised their minimum wages to near or above $15 an hour.<\/p>\n

In Washington, the minimum wage climbed from $8.07 in 2008 to $15.74 in 2023. In Oregon, it grew from $7.95 to $14.20 over the same period. Oregon saw the largest rise in cost of living, with a 6.9 percent increase in prices compared to the rest of the country. Washington came in second with a 3.9 percent increase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sources:\u00a0U.S. Department of Labor<\/a>;\u00a0Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sources:\u00a0U.S. Department of Labor<\/a>;\u00a0Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Oklahoma actually saw its cost of living\u00a0fall by 1.3 percent compared to the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

Raising Oklahoma\u2019s minimum wage through SQ 832 will result in fewer jobs for minimum-wage workers and higher prices for everyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research shows just how harmful SQ 832 would be for the very people it claims to help. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,897,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-521499","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115422025892728735","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}