Why Unions Hunger for a Job-Killing Minimum Wage Hike -- By Jim Geraghty, National Review

 CBO: Obama’s Primary Economic Proposal Would Eliminate 500,000 Jobs

This is pretty consequential, no?

Once fully implemented in the second half of 2016, the $10.10 option [for the minimum wage] would reduce total employment by about 500,000 workers, or 0.3 percent, CBO projects (see the table below). As with any such estimates, however, the actual losses could be smaller or larger; in CBO’s assessment, there is about a two-thirds chance that the effect would be in the range between a very slight reduction in employment and a reduction in employment of 1.0 million workers.

So, best guess is a half-million jobs eliminated, maybe as many as a million jobs?

Richard Berman:

The Center for Union Facts analyzed collective-bargaining agreements obtained from the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. The data indicate that a number of unions in the service, retail and hospitality industries peg their base-line wages to the minimum wage. . . . The two most popular formulas were setting baseline union wages as a percentage above the state or federal minimum wage or mandating a flat wage premium above the minimum wage.

And now you see why raising the minimum wage is such an intense priority for Democrats. A higher minimum wage means higher wages for union workers, which means higher union dues, which gives unions more money to spend during campaign season.

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