CBO: Minimum Wage Effects

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reports that the President's proposed hike in the federal minimum wage would cost the economy 500,000 lost jobs. See an article on their findings by Robert Samuelson for RealClearPolitics.

To be fair to the President, it would also improve the lot of some poor families, to the tune of perhaps $300 per year. The impact is modest because, as Samuelson notes:

Many low-income workers, presumably young, come from middle-class families, including 33 percent from families with incomes exceeding three times the poverty line.