Notes

A minimum wage increase would hurt businesses and force companies to close. 60% of small-business owners say that raising the minimum wage will "hurt most small-business owners," according to a 2013 Gallup poll. [50] Jamie Richardson, MBA, Vice President of fast-food chain White Castle, said that the company would be forced to close almost half its stores and let go thousands of workers if the federal minimum wage were raised to $15. [51] Forbes reported that an increase in the minimum wage has led to the closure of several Wal-Mart stores and the cancellation of promised stores yet to open. [52]

increasing the minimum wage would force businesses to lay off employees and raise unemployment levels. The Congressional Budget Office projected that a minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $10.10 would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs. [5] In a survey of 1,213 businesses and human resources professionals, 38% of employers who currently pay minimum wage said they would lay off some employees if the minimum wage was raised to $10.10. 54% said they would decrease hiring levels. [44] San Francisco's Office of Economic Analysis said that an increase to $15 would reduce the city's employment by about "15,270 private-sector jobs." [45] In 2014, Steve H. Hanke, Ph.D., Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University, surveyed the 21 European Union (EU) countries that have a minimum wage and found they had an average unemployment rate of 11.8%, about a third higher than the 7.9% average unemployment rate in the seven EU countries that have no minimum wage. [46]
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