Demos has some figures for thought in How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Overall Economy. Here's a summary of the study from Demos:
This study assumes a new wage floor for the lowest-paid retail workers equivalent to $25,000 per year for a full-time, year-round retail worker at the nation's largest retail companies, those employing at least 1,000 workers. For the typical worker earning less than this threshold, the new floor would mean a 27 percent pay raise. Including both the direct effects of the wage raise and spillover effects, the new floor will impact more than 5 million retail workers and their families. This study examines the impact of the new wage floor on economic growth and job creation, on consumers in terms of prices
, on companies in terms of profit and sales, and for retail workers in terms of their purchasing power and poverty status.
“There is a flaw in the conventional thinking that profits, low prices and decent wages cannot co-exist,” says Catherine Ruetschlin, study author and Demos Policy Analyst. “The findings in the study prove the country’s largest retailers are in an ideal position to launch a private sector stimulus, leading the way towards a new model for American prosperity.”
Robert Reich offers his viewpoint below the fold:
Most new jobs in America are in personal services like retail, with low pay and bad hours. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average full-time retail worker earns between $18,000 and $21,000 per year.
But if retail workers got a raise, would consumers have to pay higher prices to make up for it? A new study by the think tank Demos reports that raising the salary of all full-time workers at large retailers to $25,000 per year would lift more than 700,000 people out of poverty, at a cost of only a 1 percent price increase for customers.
And, in the end, retailers would benefit. According to the study, the cost of the wage increases to major retailers would be $20.8 billion — about one percent of the sector’s $2.17 trillion in total annual sales. But the study also estimates the increased purchasing power of lower-wage workers as a result of the pay raises would generate $4 billion to $5 billion in additional retail sales.
