Jobs Gamble.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Minimum wage research - Brief article

FOLLOWING THE most recent increase in the federal minimum wage in 2009, 23 states increased their minimum wages still further. Those states now average about 11.5 percent higher than the federal minimum. Over the past two years, some tides, including Los Angeles and Seattle, have begun experiments that would push local minimum wages to as much as $15 an hour.

Many supporters argue that academic research on minimum wages show that they don't result in reduced employment. But late in 2017, Alan B. Krueger--a former White House economic adviser whose work on the minimum wage found essentially no job loss in some instances--warned that the latest round of wage hikes might be taking things too far.

A federal minimum wage set at $15, he wrote in The New York Times, "is beyond international experience, and could well be counterproductive. Although some high-wage cities and...