Minimum wage increases to take effect Sunday

Low-wage workers in two states and 16 local jurisdictions across the country will get pay raises starting July 1, when new minimum wage hikes take effect.

Residents in Maryland will see the lowest wages rise to $10.10 an hour, and in Oregon a 50-cent increase will bring the minimum wage to $10.75. Pay is also set to rise in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Maine and Washington, D.C.

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Most of the wage hikes are in California, where legislators in 2016 passed measures to increase pay in several steps over the next five years.

Wages in San Francisco will jump to $15 an hour on Sunday. In nearby Emeryville, a suburb of Oakland, the lowest-paid workers will see a gain of 49 cents an hour, to $15.69, one of the highest levels in the country.

In Belmont, a small town south of San Francisco, the minimum wage will rise $2, to $12.50 an hour. Los Angeles, Malibu, Milpitas, Pasadena and Santa Monica will see their lowest wages rise by $1.25, to $13.25.

Some economists worry the increases are coming at the expense of teenage workers, who may be left out of a job if a business decides it is more profitable to replace a worker with automated technology. There are now more teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 who are not in the labor market — that is, neither employed nor looking for a job — than there were during the height of the Great Recession in 2009.

“It looks like even though youth unemployment is basically as low as it’s been, at the same time the number of teens that are out of the labor force, just aren’t looking for work at all, is near a historic high,” said Mike Saltsman, who heads the center-right Employment Policies Institute. “We’re seeing a hollowing out of some of the opportunities that young adults traditionally filled.”

Youth participation in the labor market peaked in 1979, when almost 58 percent of those between 16 and 19 were employed or looking for a job. In the years since, labor market participation has fallen to 34 percent, and it is projected to fall to just under 25 percent by 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

In a 2017 analysis, BLS economist Teresa Morisi wrote that the participation decline among teenagers came in part because colleges now value experience, like volunteering, over employment. School coursework now takes longer than it did in the past, and a changing economy has meant older workers are taking jobs once reserved, in practice, for teenagers.

“Traditionally, teens held summer jobs even if they did not work during the school year, and labor force participation is higher during the summer than during the school year,” Morisi wrote. “Even though some teens still have summer jobs, the proportion of teens who participate in the labor force during the summer has dropped dramatically.”

The BLS study found that school is even taking up time in summer. In 1985, just more than 10 percent of those between 16 and 19 were enrolled in school in July. By 2016, that number had climbed to 42.1 percent.