History in the making: Seattle is raising its minimum wage to $15
But, as Reihan Salam has written, the effects may also be more subtly damaging. As wages rise, businesses could simply seek to hire better educated and skilled employees, some of whom may well live outside the city limits, but suddenly find themselves happy to commute for a fatter paycheck. Seattle’s low-wage workers, meaning those who earn less than $15 an hour, are already more likely to have attended college than their counterparts in cities like Denver and San Francisco. As the pay floor rises, it seems reasonable to suspect that college-educated workers from around the region will take a growing share of jobs that might have once gone to high-school grads.
