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HARRISBURG, Pa. (WENY) - On Tuesday, the House passed a gradual increase to the state’s $7.25 per hour minimum wage. House Bill 1500 would raise it to $15 dollars per hour by 2026 if signed into law, but some are concerned about the impact it would have on Pennsylvania jobs.
“This minimum wage is going to kill about 86,000 jobs,” said Rebekah Paxton, Director of Research for the Employment Policies Institute. “Half of those are going to be in the restaurant and bar industry. This is a real hit to hospitality and restaurants who have faced a couple of really difficult years and are still recovering from the pandemic,” she added.
Part of the reason for the disproportionate impact, Paxton says, is because HB 1500 would ultimately increase the wage for tipped employees by more than 200 percent. A recent study by the Employment Policies Institute estimates, of the nearly 86,000 jobs that could go, over 30,000 would be tipped employees.
HB 1500 sets the tipped wage to 60 percent of the minimum wage. The minimum wage would gradually increase to $15 starting with $11 by Jan 1, 2024, $13 by Jan 1, 2025, and $15 by Jan 1, 2026. The minimum wage would be indexed to inflation thereafter.
“Indexing to inflation essentially just means every year Pennsylvania is going to measure how much prices went up in a given year and they're going to increase the minimum wage by the same amount,” said Paxton, who also warns the increases would come at a cost.
“Businesses would be facing wage...
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