minimum wage increase:
jobs and hope lost
for young workers
Anthony Anton, President and CEO,
Washington Restaurant Association
No strings attached, no obligations, no impacts — just
more money in your pocket. As businesspeople, you know
anything that sounds like this usually smells like something else.
This essentially is the issue with having the highest
minimum wage in the country. It sounds so easy — a few
dimes more for hardworking people who earn the least.
No harm — public good — what’s the big deal?
To the restaurant industry, the state’s largest private
employer, it is a huge deal that has had real impacts to the
success of small business.
huge impact on jobs
Long before the recession began, Washington restaurants had made major adjustments to their businesses to
survive the fallout of operating in the highest minimum
wage state in the country, with no reasonable exceptions. U.S. restaurants average more than 17 employees
per unit. Washington? We average just over 14. There
are more than 13,000 restaurants in our state, equaling
39,000 jobs that we effectively have eliminated for just
the cost of a few dimes.
huge impact on young workers
I heard a speaker call this generation of Washington
teenagers the first generation to have the vast majority
graduate and hit the streets without any work experience.
Think about that — no training in work ethic, customer
service, handling money, timeliness or responsibility
to a team. This is a major problem, according to the
National Bureau of Economic Research, which found
that high school seniors who worked 20 hours a week
could expect to earn 21 percent more in annual salary
and 11 percent higher hourly wages six to nine years later.
Having the highest minimum wage in the country with
no reasonable exceptions has resulted in some of the
highest teen unemployment in the country. According to
the state’s own numbers, despite having 25 percent more
restaurants, the employment of teens in the restaurant
Anthony Anton, President and CEO,
Washington Restaurant Association
industry has dropped by almost half, following the passage
of the minimum wage initiative in 1998 — all for the cost
of a few dimes.
huge impact on veteran employees
The irony for the full service side of our industry is that
the minimum wage has