The job losses from boosting the federal minimum wage to $15 would be “very minimal,” Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen told lawmakers on Jan. 19.
“In terms of potential job loss, there’s now a large economic literature on this, and much of it suggests that raising minimum wages ... researchers often look at what happens if one state raises its minimum wage and a neighboring state leaves it alone to see how businesses fare in the two different places with different treatments, and the findings are that job loss is very minimal, if anything,” Yellen told members of the Senate Finance Committee in Washington during a partially virtual confirmation hearing.
