News and perspective on public policy issues affecting Washington's economy and quality of life, brought to you by the Economic Opportunity Institute.
At $9.19 per hour, Washington state has the best minimum wage in the nation – and far better than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour. Our state minimum wage is tied to inflation, increasing a little bit nearly every year. In January 2013, the minimum wage wage increased 15 cents – mostly driven by higher gas prices. […]
On New Year’s Day, our states accomplished something that Congress has achieved only erratically over the past 40 years: raising the minimum wage. By now, minimum wage increases have become a routine practice in our home states, thanks to a key policy reform known as indexing, which establishes automatic annual adjustments to the minimum wage to keep pace with the rising cost of living each year. Washington led the nation in adopting indexing in 1998, and Oregon followed suit in 2002. In each state, the adoption of indexing resulted from ballot initiatives that passed with roughly two-thirds of public support.
When my kids got their first jobs, I was happy that we in Washington had voted for a decent minimum wage. I knew that they couldn’t be completely taken advantage of, and that they would be doing better in Washington than in other states. Now we have reason to celebrate again, because just on Tuesday […]
The big news of last week for those receiving Social Security benefits was the announcement of a 1.7% benefit increase for 2013, thanks to a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) linked to inflation. These COLAs began in 1975, when Congress tied annual benefit adjustments to inflation. Each year when there’s inflation, benefits are increased to keep up with […]
