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UW Researchers Report Price Data After Seattle’s Minimum Wage Increase

Elaine Thompson
/
AP
In this photo taken Monday, July 27, 2015, server Zachary DeYoung carries a tray of food at an Ivar's restaurant in Seattle.

Seattle was the first big city to adopt a $15 minimum wage law, and now there’s new research on how that’s affected the prices we pay at stores and restaurants.

University of Washington researchers are doing a multi-year study to analyze economic impacts of the wage hike. They started tracking consumer prices last March, right before the first wage hike to $11 an hour.

“Overall, we found that prices in Seattle are fairly stable and they haven’t gone up very much, if at all, since the minimum wage went up starting in April of last year," said Jacob Vigdor, the Daniel J. Evans professor of public policy at UW. "The exception would be in the restaurant sector, where we found price increases on the order of 7 or 8 percent."

But restaurant prices also rose outside of Seattle. Vigdor said his team didn’t collect that much restaurant data outside the city, making it a bit hard to draw conclusions.

"So we don’t have quite as much confidence in saying that 7 or 8 percent is purely a Seattle thing or whether it’s a broader economic phenomenon that could be reflecting rising rents or bigger ingredient prices that could be affecting the entire metro area," Vigdor said. 

They’ve now started collecting more restaurant data outside Seattle for comparison. The team has also been conducting worker interviews and surveying employers. Vigdor said they’ll release more findings later this year.  

Right now in Seattle, workers for large businesses earn $13 an hour if they don’t get medical benefits. 

In July 2017, Ashley Gross became KNKX's youth and education reporter after years of covering the business and labor beat. She joined the station in May 2012 and previously worked five years at WBEZ in Chicago, where she reported on business and the economy. Her work telling the human side of the mortgage crisis garnered awards from the Illinois Associated Press and the Chicago Headline Club. She's also reported for the Alaska Public Radio Network in Anchorage and for Bloomberg News in San Francisco.