From Workforce Management:
A controversial city-funded study released May 9 shows that a bill to mandate higher wages at city-subsidized projects would stifle development, particularly in the outer boroughs, resulting in a loss of tens of thousands of jobs during the next 20 years.... The city's Economic Development Corp. selected Charles River Associates to conduct the study, angering the proponents, who contended the firm's experts were predisposed to findings against wage mandates. They were particularly suspicious of David Neumark, a University of California at Irvine economics professor who has argued against wage mandates. As details of the study emerged, living wage proponents hit back. "It is unfortunate that the EDC study failed to look at well-known factors such as the cost of public subsidies received by low-wage workers, or the positive productivity effects of better wages, in assessing how city policies can improve the living standards of low-wage workers," said James Parrott, deputy director and chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.

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