The paper adds to a growing body of research about the minimum wage, which has become a hot topic in the pandemic era. An effort by President Joe Biden and other Democrats to more than double the federal minimum wage to $15 ran aground in the Senate last year, but 21 states raised it on their own at the outset of 2022. n addition to the improvement on payments, however, there was a surprising downside for renters, the study showed: Landlords hiked rents over the three months following the minimum wage increases by an average of 7.6%—a $54-a-month rent boost on average that would eat up a little more than half the minimum wage hikes over the same period. “I assumed that there would be some upward adjustment, but the size was larger than I expected,” Brent Ambrose, a professor of real estate at Pennsylvania State University and one of the study’s co-authors, said about the rent hikes in an email. Those rent increases meant that while some minimum-wage workers probably came out ahead after all was said and done, others did not, Ambrose said. Have a question, comment, or story to share? You can reach Diccon at dhyatt@thebalance.com.
