Predictions of the sky falling over Seattle, Wash. may have been slightly overstated. We were told restaurants would close, the city would be impoverished, and cats and dogs would cohabitate following the introduction of Seattle’s $15 minimum wage.
It turns out, not so much.
Not only was Seattle’s job growth far better than the national average, it also didn’t result in more businesses boarding up their windows, according to a University of Washington study.
We don’t want to simplify this issue. After all, the city’s rising employment numbers (about 3.7 per cent from 2015 to 2016) might be due to companies expanding or a flurry of construction projects.
But what the Emerald City experiment does seem to prove is that a higher minimum wage sure doesn’t hurt anybody.
This issue is especially crucial on the North Shore, and especially between the hours of 3 and 6 p.m. That’s when so many of the North Shore’s workers – denizens of our lost generation – clock out from coffee shops, construction sites and care homes to clog our two strained crossings.
We applauded (or at least golf clapped for) Premier Christy Clark’s decision to lift what was Canada’s most minimal minimum wage in 2016. Still, anybody making $10.85 an hour (or $11.25 as of September) is a lot more likely to leave here than live here.
The B.C. Liberals relentlessly tout: “More Trade. More Jobs. More Opportunity.”
We concur with that sentiment, but when it comes to the workers trying to move up from the bottom of the economic heap, we’d like just one addition.
More money.
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