The University of Washington announced earlier this week that it will embark on a comprehensive study of the effects of Seattle's new minimum wage law. The new law raised the minimum wage in Seattle to $11/hr on April 1, 2015 (up from $9.32/hr), it will rise to $15/hr for companies with more than 500 employees nationally by 2018. Part of the new city ordinance was a commitment to monitor the impact of the higher minimum wage and the city has contracted with UW to perform that evaluation. The press release announcing the five year study can be found here:
http://www.washington.edu/...
The study will be an multifaceted evaluation combining the resources of the Evans School of Public Affairs and the School of Social Work. The State of Washington's Employment Security Department will also be involved. Jacob Vigdor, a Professor at the Evans School will be the Principal Investigator and was quoted as saying "Our goal is to make this a data driven conversation about what is the good that is being done, what is the harm that is being done, and are we happy with that tradeoff".
The study seems to be very robust in its design and will look at all aspects of the impact of the higher minimum wage on both employees, and their families, as well as employers.
I think that collecting and analyzing data on higher minimum wage laws will be very helpful in building data to support other communities who are also reviewing increases in their local minimum wage. There is a great deal of data available on modest increases in the minimum wage and its negligible impact on unemployment and prices. However, there is little data on more significant increases in the minimum wage and the type of data that will be part of the UW study will help guide public policy.