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This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016.

Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies.

When Seattle officials voted three years ago to incrementally boost the city’s minimum wage up to $15 an hour, they’d hoped to improve the lives of low-income workers. Yet according to a major new study that could force economists to reassess past research on the issue, the hike has had the opposite effect. The city is gradually increasing the hourly minimum to $15 over several years. Already, though, some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They’ve cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go, the study found. The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city.

The report follows a disappointing April, when the state lost jobs for the first time in several months. The May unemployment rate dropped from 4.8% in April, but it still hovers above the national rate of 4.3%. For the second month in a row, the state economy’s year-over-year growth was slower in May than the overall U.S. economy.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent in May, the lowest in 16 years, so teens started looking for summer jobs in the best labor market since the tech boom of the early 2000s. The May unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds was 14.3 percent, but teens usually find it harder to find jobs than their more experienced elders. Back in 2009, the teenage jobless rate hit 27 percent. 

Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 138,000 in May from the prior month, the Labor Department said Friday, and job gains in the prior two months were revised down. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, the lowest reading since May 2001. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected 184,000 new jobs to be added in May and a jobless rate of 4.4%. 

The pace of hiring picked up again in April and the unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in nearly a decade, evidence the U.S. economy is poised for a spring rebound after a lackluster start to the year.

California’s unemployment rate fell to 4.9 percent in March.

The state Employment Development Department said Friday the rate was down from 5 percent in February and 5.6 percent in March 2016.

The department says the state’s employers added 19,300 nonfarm payroll jobs last month.

Employers slowed their pace of hiring in March, but beneath the surface the labor market continued to improve and tighten, leaving the Federal Reserve on course to keep raising short-term interest rates and workers with prospects of better paydays. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 98,000 in March from the previous month, the Labor Department said Friday, a slowdown from the prior two months. Still, the unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.5% as the number of employed workers grew more quickly than the labor force, pushing the measure to the lowest level since May 2007.

The researchers said they were surprised to see very little employment increase in other occupations to offset the job losses in manufacturing. That increase could still happen, they said, but for now there are large numbers of people out of work, with no clear path forward — especially blue-collar men without college degrees.

California’s unemployment rate fell to 5 percent in February as the state’s employers added 22,900 nonfarm payroll jobs. The state Employment Development Department said Friday that last month’s rate was a drop from a revised 5.2 percent in January.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to a very low level at the end of 2016, raising the question of whether the labor market has become too tight. After applying a new method to adjust for demographic changes in the labor force, the current unemployment rate is still 0.3 to 0.4 percentage point higher than at past labor market peaks. This indicates that the labor market may not be quite as tight as the headline unemployment rate suggests.

“In January, the number of Americans quitting their jobs rose to a seasonally-adjusted total of 3.22 million, the highest number since February 2001. The quits rate rose in January to 2.2%. People quitting their jobs in droves is seen as a sign of confidence among workers, as folks are unlikely to quit a job unless they are confident they can get another one. “

The pace of job creation remained robust in February, with payrolls rising by a seasonally adjusted 235,000 new jobs, the Labor Department said.

Santa Clara County lost 3,500 jobs while the Alameda County-Contra Costa County area lost 900 jobs in January compared to December, seasonally adjusted figures from the Employment Development Department show. The San Francisco-San Mateo region managed a gain of only a paltry 400 jobs.

The current job creation rate is “miserable,” said Chapman University economist Raymond Sfeir, adding that the number of Orange County residents who were employed in January was only 3,100 more than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s household survey.