The first paper, “,” was published in late December in a special issue of Social Work and Society International Online Journal.

The study found that more than half of Seattle child care businesses were affected by increased labor costs as the policy increased to $13 per hour, and that the majority will be impacted as the policy increases to $15 per hour between 2019 and 2021.

The most common strategic response reported by the businesses has been to raise prices or fees of child tuition and to reduce hours of or number of staff. Center directors reported that employee wages and benefits comprise the majority of business expenses and that child tuition was the primary source of business income. Thus, most businesses reported they would need a mix of strategies to accommodate increased labor costs to ensure that added expenses were not falling entirely onto the families they serve.

In this paper, researchers used quantitative and qualitative data to capture how the policy was affecting wages in the industry and how child care businesses were responding to the policy implementation. Using state payroll data from about 200 child care businesses, the study examined multiple factors including the number of staff per business, staff wages and business payrolls beginning in 2014 and into 2016. Researchers also surveyed 41 business directors at three different times during the rollout of the minimum wage policy. Finally, researchers conducted open-ended, in-depth interviews with 15 child care directors.

“This study illustrates how singular policies can affect more than just payroll and can shape organizational structure and service delivery,” said lead author , an associate professor in the School of Public Health.

The second paper, “,” was published in early January in a special issue of the online International Journal of Environmental and Public Health.

In this paper, researchers examined the effect of Seattle’s minimum wage ordinance on local area supermarket food prices over time and as wages phased in to $15 per hour.

Overall, the authors found no significant evidence of price increases associated with the minimum wage ordinance. The paper also sought to evaluate the potential for differential price changes that might be related to diet quality, including analyses by food group, level of food processing, and nutrient quality. The authors found no evidence of significant price increases in any of the diet quality measures examined that could be attributed to the minimum wage ordinance.

“This is really great news for low-wage earning Seattle shoppers,” said James Buszkiewicz, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Epidemiology and lead author on the study. “Typically null findings do not get that much attention, but in this case, if local food prices remain steady while earnings increase for low and minimum wage workers, then that could mean increased purchasing power for things like fresh fruit and vegetables for the consumers that need it most.”

Buszkiewicz said that the study findings may not be generalizable to all cities and states experiencing minimum wage increases given Seattle’s unique economic circumstances, however, he hopes that this study will serve as a model for other investigators to examine potential price hikes in their state or area.

The investigators collected prices for 106 food items from six large supermarket chain stores affected by the ordinance in Seattle and in six of the same-chain stores in King County and unaffected by the ordinance. The price check occurred at four time points: one month pre- (March 2015), one month post- (May 2015), one year post- (May 2016), and two years post- (May 2017) ordinance implementation.

Funding for the child care study came from , the City of Seattle and a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant to the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology at the UW.

Other co-authors for the child care study include Katherine Getts of the 91̽��School of Public Health; Heather D. Hill and Scott W. Allard from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance; Jennifer Romich from the 91̽��School of Social Work; Ekaterina Jardim, who was a postdoctoral researcher at the 91̽��and now works for Amazon; and Anne Althauser, who worked at the 91̽��Evans School of Public Policy and Governance and now works for the 91̽��Office of Planning & Budgeting.

Funding for the food prices study came from Arnold Ventures and the City of Seattle. Other co-authors for the food prices study include Anju Aggarwal and Adam Drewnowski of the 91̽��School of Public Health; Mark Long from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance; and Catherine House, who was a graduate student in the 91̽��Nutritional Sciences Program.

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For more information about the child care study, contact Otten at jotten@uw.edu.

For more information about the supermarket food prices study, contact Buszkiewicz at buszkiew@uw.edu.

The lot of Seattle’s lowest-paid workers improved following the city’s minimum wage increase to $11 in 2015, but that was more due to the robust regional economy than the wage hike itself, according to a research team at the 91̽��’s .

Although the ordinance appears to have boosted wages for the city’s lowest-paid workers, the benefits of the increase may have been partly offset by fewer hours worked per person and slightly less overall employment, the research team found. Estimated income gains for the average worker were modest – on the order of a few dollars a week – and sensitive to methodological choices.

The City of Seattle passed its in June of 2014, and that December commissioned the 91̽��team to conduct a five-year study of the law’s impacts. The ongoing research is led by professors and with , associate professor in the 91̽��, and other co-authors from the Evans School, the and the Washington Employment Security Department.

The team presented its in an update to the council this morning (July 25).

The ordinance took effect April 1, 2015, raising the minimum hourly wage from $9.47 to $11. Under the law, businesses with fewer than 500 employees are scheduled to reach the $15 an hour wage in 2021. Employers with 500 or more employees, either in Seattle or nationally, will reach that level in three years, or 2017.

The challenge of this report, Vigdor said, was to isolate the effects of the wage increase ordinance from all other concurrent economic factors, chiefly the surging regional economy. This enables the researchers to compare Seattle to what it might look like today had the minimum wage ordinance never happened — knowing, too, that the strong economy was slowly pushing wages up regardless of the ordinance.

For their research, the team used employment, hours and earnings records from the Washington Employment Security Division going back to 2005 to create a model of how the local labor market works. They also viewed data on other nearby regions that did not increase their minimum wage, to better understand how rising property values, expanding tech employment and even the weather might have influenced what the team observed in the city itself.

The research sought to answer two questions: What has happened to Seattle’s labor market since passage of the minimum wage ordinance? And more crucially, what has been the effect of that ordinance on the labor market?

The first question involves simple comparisons of yesterday with today. But, Vigor said, “To imagine what a higher minimum wage might accomplish in a region not enjoying a significant economic boom, or what might happen in Seattle next year if the boom should wear off, the second question is the only one that matters.”

The researchers found that:

• Seattle’s lowest-paid workers saw larger-than-usual paychecks in late 2015, but at most, only 25 percent of the observed income gains — a few dollars a week — can be attributed to the higher wage.

• Businesses relying heavily on low-wage staff showed signs of cutting back, though they too benefited from the strong economy. They added jobs at about the same rate as businesses outside the city, but employees’ working hours in the city lagged by an average of about one hour per employee per week.

• Even amid a relative boom, Seattle’s lowest-wage earners show signs of “lagging behind” a control group drawn from other parts of the state. The employment rate was down about 1 percentage point for workers who earned less than $11 an hour in mid-2014; their average hours declined, and the proportion switching from jobs in the city to elsewhere ticked upward by 2 to 3 percent.

“Our report indicates that Seattle’s track record after increasing the minimum wage is neither as negative as some had feared nor as positive as some had hoped,” Vigdor said. “While the vibrant local economy is boosting employment and incomes up and down the economic ladder, the positive effects of a higher minimum wage are being at least partly offset by cutbacks in hours.”

The researchers cautioned, however, that their findings are statistical averages that could mask distinctions among different types of workers. The findings address only the short-run impact of Seattle’s wage hike to $11 an hour and don’t reflect the full range of experiences for thousands of individual workers in the Seattle economy.

Next, the research team plans to incorporate more detailed information about workers by linking employment records to other state databases. This will provide the capacity to determine, for instance, whether the workers benefiting most from higher minimum wages are more likely to be living in poverty.

Other coming work will include:

• Extending the analysis to Seattle’s second wage increase, in April 2016, when the ordinance began distinguishing between businesses of different sizes
• Collecting additional survey information from Seattle businesses and conducting more interviews with a sample of workers tracked since early 2015.

The team expects to make its next report to the city in September; that report will focus on how the minimum wage hike has impacted Seattle nonprofit organizations.

91̽��co-investigators on the ongoing study are of the UW’s and , and of the Evans School. Other co-investigators are Scott Bailey and Anneliese Vance-Sherman of the state employment security department.

The research was funded in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant to the UW’s . Funding also was provided by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the City of Seattle.

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For more information, contact the research team at mwage@uw.edu or J. Paul Blake, Evans School director of media and external relations, at 206-543-3958 or jpblake@uw.edu.

Grant # R24 HD042828

But a year after the law’s April 2015 implementation, the study indicates such increases don’t seem to be happening.

The interdisciplinary team, centered in the surveyed employers and workers and scanned area commodity and service prices. The team’s report found “little or no evidence” of price increases in Seattle relative to other areas, its report states.

The City of Seattle’s was adopted in June of 2014, and began taking effect on April 1, 2015. Under the law, businesses with fewer than 500 employees will reach the $15 an hour wage in seven years, or 2021. Employers with 500 or more employees (either in Seattle or nationally) will reach that level in three years.

When approving the ordinance, the Seattle City Council also commissioned a thorough study of the law’s impacts, and sealed a contract with the 91̽��in December 2014. The study is led by Evans School professors and with , associate professor in the 91̽��, and other co-authors from the Evans School and the . Two economists from the Washington Employment Security Department are also on the team.

The researchers released April 18 in a presentation to the Seattle City Council.

The study, conducted between January and May 2015, surveyed 567 randomly selected Seattle employers as well as 55 workers, asking their awareness of and feelings about its expected and actual effects, to establish a baseline for that information.

Responses indicate that nearly all employers knew about the new law, though many were uncertain about its implementation. Many employers expressed hope the higher wages will improve both worker morale and boost job applications, though they also doubt it will improve individual employee productivity among minimum wage workers.

Sixty-two percent of employers said they expected to raise prices of goods and services to accommodate the higher wages brought by the law. Ten percent of the employers believed incorrectly that the ordinance would force their business to move to a $15 wage immediately upon implementation.

But in an analysis of area prices over time, done through a combination of “web scraping” and in-person visits to grocery stores, restaurants and other retail locations, such price increases were not in evidence.

“Our preliminary analysis of grocery, retail and rent prices has found little or no evidence of price increases in Seattle relative to the surrounding area,” the team concluded.

Workers, for their part — many of whom reported struggling to make ends meet despite community and government assistance — responded to the survey wondering doubtfully if the wage increases would truly improve their financial situation. Most knew about the law but many were uncertain of details, the study found.

“Today’s report documents both the hopes and fears that workers and business managers expressed as Seattle began its initiative to raise the minimum wage,” said Vigdor. “Business owners are hopeful that small changes to their operation — such as small price increases — will keep them in the black.

“Workers are hopeful about the promise of greater income, but harbor few illusions about the potential for price increases, or reductions in government benefits, to eat away at these gains.”

The team’s subsequent study on the Seattle minimum wage law will include:

• A second round of worker interviews this spring to learn more about its effects on work and family life, and more in spring of 2017 if funding allows.
• Analysis this spring of employment security data on employment, hours, and earnings for a report to be released this summer
• Another full survey of employers and workers in 2017.
• A brief follow-up survey of employers this summer to depict changes over time.
• Continued study of prices, expanding to the areas outside Seattle.
• A study this fall on the impact of the ordinance on Seattle nonprofits, through surveys and interviews.

“From its inception, this study has sought to do more than track employment figures,” Vigdor said. “Our team hopes to develop a full understanding of how businesses and nonprofits change their practices to accommodate higher wages, and of whether a higher minimum wage meaningfully transforms lives. Today’s report showcases that broader approach.”

Vigdor and Long’s co-investigators on the Seattle Minimum Wage Study are of the UW’s and , and of the Evans School. Other co-investigators are Scott Bailey and Anneliese Vance-Sherman of the state employment security department.

The research was funded in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant to the UW’s . Funding also was provided by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the City of Seattle.

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For more information, contact the research team at mwage@uw.edu or J. Paul Blake, Evans School director of media and external relations, at 206-543-3958 or jpblake@uw.edu.

Grant # R24 HD042828