ALBANY—The Business Council of New York State opposes the Assembly’s proposal, set forth in A.7257 (Titus), that would cost jobs and hurt small businesses still fighting their way back from the depths of the recession. The bill would, by 2019, raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour in New York City, plus Westchester and Nassau Counties and to $12.60 in the rest of the state. This legislation may be well-intentioned, but it will have unintended and adverse consequences.
Current law calls for the minimum wage to reach $9 an hour by the end of this year. We’ve yet to fully implement and study the current wage hike and already the advocates are pushing for more.
What we do know is past wage increases have cost jobs and ended up negatively impacting the very people the legislation is supposed to protect. A study by Cornell and American Universities found that the state’s 2005 minimum wage hike caused in-state employment of low-skilled workers between ages 16 and 29 to fall by more than 12 percent.
The bottom line is this legislation, if enacted, would cost jobs, and make it even harder for our state’s most vulnerable citizens to find employment.
A full copy of our opposition memo to A.7257, Assembly wage proposal can be found here.