Massachusetts lawmakers are considering a bill that would raise the minimum wage for workers in the state from the current $11 per hour to $15 per hour by 2022.
The measure would increase the minimum wage by $1 every year starting in 2019 until it reaches the $15 per hour mark in 2022. After that, the law would mandate that it would be tied to inflation an increase each year with the cost of living.
It would also increase the minimum wage for tipped employees, who currently make $3.75 an hour. It would go up each year until it reaches $9 an hour in 2022.
A report by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center said the bill would raise the wages of roughly 943,000 workers, or 29 percent of the state’s workforce, 56 percent of which are women.
In 2015, the state legislature approved a measure to increase the minimum wage from $8 per hour to its current $11 per hour.
In a recent op-ed piece, Chris Carlozzi, the Massachusetts state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said the bill would hurt businesses and workers.
“Seattle, an early adopter of a $15 minimum wage, released a study in 2017 after that city’s incremental increase to $13 per hour. It found that nine months after the second tier of wage hikes, about 5,000 low-wage jobs disappeared, the number of hours worked by low-wage workers dropped by 3.5 million hours, and their wages dropped by $6 million,” Carlozzi wrote.