As the United States emerges from the Great Recession, concern is rising nationally over the issues of income inequality, stagnation of workers' wages, and especially the struggles of lower-skilled workers at the -bottom end of the wage scale. While Washington deliberates legislation raising the minimum wage, a number of major American employers—for example, Aetna and Walmart—have begun to voluntarily raise the pay of their own lowest-paid employees. In this collection of essays, economists from the Peterson Institute for International Economics analyze the potential benefits and costs of widespread wage increases, if adopted by a range of US private employers. They make this assessment for the workers, the companies, and for the US economy as a whole, including such an initiative's effects on national competitiveness. These economists conclude that raising the pay of many of the lowest-paid US private-sector workers would not only reduce income inequality but also boost overall productivity growth, with likely minimal effect on employment in the current financial context. "It is possible to profit from paying your employees well…and increasing lower-paid workers' wages is the way forward for the United States," argues Adam S. Posen in his lead essay (reprinted from theFinancial Times). Justin Wolfers and Jan Zilinsky argue that higher wages can encourage low-paid workers to be more productive and loyal to their employers and coworkers, reducing costly job turnover and the need for supervision and training of new workers. Tomas Hellebrandt estimates that if all large private sector corporations in the United States outside of sectors that intensively use low-skilled labor increased wages of their low-paid workers to $16 per hour, the pay of 6.2 percent of the $110 million private-sector workers in the United States would increase on average by 38.6 percent. The direct cost to employers would be $51 billion, only around 0.3 percent of GDP. Jacob Kirkegaard and Tyler Moran explore the experience of employers in other advanced countries, with its implications for international competitiveness, and Michael Jarand assesses the impact of a wage increase on the near-term development of the US macroeconomy. Data disclosure: The data underlying the figures in this analysis are available for download in links listed below.

Raise the Floor shows why so many hardworking Americans can't make ends meet.

Belman and Wolfson perform a meta-analysis on scores of published studies on the effects of the minimum wage to determine its impacts on employment, wages, poverty, and more.

“Rolf shows that raising the minimum wage to $15 is both just and necessary, lest the American dream of middle class prosperity turn into a nightmare” (David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist). Combining history, economics, and commonsense political wisdom, The Fight for $15 makes a deeply informed case for a national fifteen-dollars-an-hour minimum wage as the only practical solution to reversing America’s decades-long slide toward becoming a low-wage nation. Drawing both on new scholarship and on his extensive practical experiences organizing workers and grappling with inequality across the United States, David Rolf, president of SEIU 775—which waged the successful Seattle campaign for a fifteen dollar minimum wage—offers an accessible explanation of “middle out” economics, an emerging popular economic theory that suggests that the origins of prosperity in capitalist economies lie with workers and consumers, not investors and employers. A blueprint for a different and hopeful American future, The Fight for $15 offers concrete tools, ideas, and inspiration for anyone interested in real change in our lifetimes. “The author’s plainspoken approach and stellar scholarship illuminate in-depth discussions about the deliberate policy decisions that began to decimate the middle class at the start of the 1980s as well as the insidious new ways in which big business continues to attack American workers today via stagnant wages, rampant subcontracting, unpredictable scheduling, and other detrimental practices associated with the so-called ‘share economy.’” —Kirkus Reviews “David Rolf has become the most successful advocate for raising wages in the twenty-first century.” —Andy Stern, senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy

With the disappearance of well-paying jobs and the increasing cost of living, it’s becoming more and more difficult to stay afloat in the United States. Workers who earn the minimum wage often can’t afford the most basic needs. In response, more than 100 U.S. cities have issued living wage ordinances, requiring payments that allow workers to afford food, clothing, shelter, utilities, and healthcare. It may seem obvious that everyone wins with a living wage. But does paying out a living wage help or harm the economy? Should corporations be forced to pay them? What is society’s responsibility to its workers?