Although the federal minimum wage isn't going anywhere, New York is in the process of hiking that wage, which now sits at $6.75 per hour and is set to go up to $7.25 per hour within a year. That means, incidentally, that even the lowest-paid worker in the state now makes more than any student at Franciscan University. $6.75 is also more than I was paid at any of the jobs I held at the University at Buffalo during my 4 years there. Call me crazy, but I expect college students to be adversely affected by New York's move, since we tend to take those positions, and some businesses are already folding up shop because of the higher wages.

I sometimes wonder what the politicians are thinking - if your business happens to rely mostly on jobs near the entry-level, this size hike in wages (31% over federal minimum thus far) is not going to be easy to manage - most businesses do not operate with the profit margin needed to cover that size increase in labor costs, meaning that they have to use some combination of price hikes and job cuts to make it work. Neither of those options are good news for people on the low end of the pay scale who can't afford either to lose work or pay more for products and services.

- Posted by in Politics at 11:09 PM