> A research team including economists from the University of Washington has put out a paper showing that Seattle’s recent minimum-wage increases brought benefits to many workers employed at the time, while leaving few employed workers worse off. (NYT)
> The workers who worked the most ahead of the minimum-wage increase appeared to do the best....The workers who worked less in the months before the minimum-wage increase saw almost no improvement in overall pay — $4 a month on average over the same period, although the result was not statistically significant. While their hourly wage increased, their hours fell substantially....It’s the final group of workers — the potential new entrants who were not employed at the time of the first minimum-wage increase — that Mr. Vigdor and his colleagues believe fared the worst. They note that, at the time of the first increase, the growth rate in new workers in Seattle making less than $15 an hour flattened out and was lagging behind the growth rate in new workers making less than $15 outside Seattle’s county. This suggests that the minimum wage had priced some workers out of the labor market, according to the authors. (NYT)
In addition, the Bloomberg article claims that the original research contradicts "the vast majority research on minimum wages" which holds that "modest, gradual wage increases have not been shown to reduce employment or hours worked in any significant way", which is irrelevant, because Seattle raised its minimum wage by 37% in one year--neither modest nor gradual.
In short, this is not a summary to be trusted.