Seven Myths About Raising the Minimum Wage—Debunked (2025 update)
Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on May 5, 2025. May 5, 2025 By Marc Stier Note: This is an updated version of a piece I wrote while I was director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. It was published in the Penn Capital–Star on October 3, 2019. A few things have changed since then—and I’ve added sixth and seventh myths to supplement the original five—but most of the arguments I made at that time not only remain true but are supported by new evidence. Raising the minimum wage in Pennsylvania is long overdue. Yet even though the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a good minimum wage bill in 2023 that was actually modeled on one introduced in the Senate, Pennsylvania’s Senate Republican leadership continues to refuse to hold a hearing or bring it up for a vote where, we believe, it would almost certainly pass. Some legislators remain… Continue reading