Fight to raise state’s minimum wage likely to return

by 2021, and a federal Congressional Budget Office report in 2014 estimated up to 1 million jobs would be lost nationwide if the minimum wereraised to $10.10 an hour.

Mr. Halper said a state earned-income tax program would better target support for low-income families. The Keystone Research Center says the federal tax credit coupled with a higher minimum wage would is more effective, based on states that have hiked the hourly rate.

Government-mandated wage increases have a perverse negative effect, said Kevin Shivers, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents smaller firms.

Employers are hiring now and paying more in order to find and keep competent employees, he said, using the minimum wage for entrylevel workers. If pay increases for less-skilled workers, it would force employers to raise it for those higher on the wage scale and lead to fewerhires, Mr. Shivers said.

“Ultimately, the people who get harmed most by raising the minimum wage are teenagers and those people trying to re-enter the workforce,” he said.

State Rep. Patty Kim, a Dauphin County Democrat, has introduced three minimum wage bills, and she said she is frustrated nothing has happened.

Ms. Kim’s most recent bill would raise the wage to $12 an hour, and then increase it by 50 cents every year thereafter until 2024, when it would reach $15. In later years, the state labor secretary would calculate an annual cost of living adjustment. A similar measure has been introduced by state Sen. Tina Tartaglione, a Democrat from Philadelphia.

“What are we waiting for? What are we afraid of?” Ms. Kim said, who added “Let’s level the playing field.”