Minimum wage earners in Washington state are due for a 15-cent pay raise come January — to $9.47 an hour, the highest state minimum wage in the nation — but more than 100 workers who rallied on the steps of the Capitol Thursday agreed that’s not enough.

They were among thousands who rallied in large cities across the U.S. Thursday, part of a series of progressive-backed events that have occurred this year, demanding elected officials in numerous states to up the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Working Washington organized Thursday’s rally at the Capitol.

A bill to eventually increase the state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour was introduced in the Legislature last session, but it failed to make it out of the House before the cutoff. Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, said following the rally Thursday that Democratic lawmakers will introduce a new proposal in the 2015 session, but the details — including the dollar-amount increase — are still to be worked out.

Rep. Mike Sells

According to University of Washington researchers, a family of two with two children in Snohomish County would need to earn to $16.56 hourly to support themselves, when factoring costs ranging from food to health care, while an identical family in Spokane County would need $12.67 an hour.

That’s not factoring in support from government programs, of course, but the costs of living in Washington state are not difficult to calculate. The effects of raising the minimum wage on the broader economy, particularly to the levels progressives and labor unions are pushing for, are tougher to grasp and are subject to heated debate among economists currently.

A hearing before Sells’ House Labor and Workforce Development Committee on Thursday offered little clarity either way. Much of that has to do with the fact that businesses and industries in the cities of Seattle and SeaTac, each of which have adopted $15-an-hour minimum wages in the last year, are still adjusting to the added costs.

ONE BUSINESS EXPANDS, ANOTHER MAY LEAVE

Each side of the debate offered anecdotes bolstering their case during the hearing. Ben Henry, a senior policy associate for the Alliance for a Just Society, said a hotel in SeaTac that originally warned of layoffs due to the wage hike, enacted following a ballot initiative in 2013, is now planning a multimillion-dollar expansion.

But from the other side, David Burroughs, vice chairman of Cascade Designs, a Seattle-based company that manufactures iconic outdoors equipment such as Therm-A-Rest, said he was prepared to move his enterprise out-of-state after more than 40 years based in the Pacific Northwest.

Burroughs said Utah and Nevada were pressing hard to get his business, and he wasn’t sure if Cascade Designs was prepared to swallow the $2 million in extra costs he projects a $15-minimum wage, which has yet to be fully implemented, may add to his bottom line. Burroughs also mentioned the high cost of leasing space in Seattle’s SoDo District as an influence.

“We are being exposed and our workers are being exposed,” to international competition, Burroughs said. “Obviously everybody wants a living wage and to earn more money. That $2 million impact is quite startling. I’ve been looking at other states.”

The clamor for a $15 minimum wage in Washington has grown increasingly stronger this year, led by progressives like Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, who was arrested in SeaTac last month at an organized protest of Alaska Airlines’ pushback against the effort.

Teresa Mosqueda, legislative and policy director for the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said at Thursday’s rally that the minimum wage needed to be raised to help workers in fast-food restaurants, in airports and those who deliver home health care rise out of poverty.

“Those who work should not live in poverty,” Mosqueda said. “Our economy does better when our workers have the money they can spend at the local stores. This is about the fight for all workers.”

A sign held during a rally for a $15 minimum wage Thursday.

GAUGING THE IMPACT

On the federal level, President Barack Obama has led a charge to up the U.S. minimum wage to a little more than $10 an hour. The Congressional Budget Office, in a report earlier this year, said that would cost a half million workers their jobs while boosting earnings for 16.5 million workers nationwide.

The total number of workers affected in Washington state is tougher to evaluate. Earlier this year, the left-leaning Washington Budget and Policy Center estimated that as many as 500,000 workers could see wage increases if the minimum wage bumped up to $12 an hour. If true, that would account for 15 percent of the state’s total workforce of 3.27 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The economy-wide results of minimum-wage hikes are a matter of which side you ask. Lori Pfingst, research and policy director for the Budget and Policy Center, said the research of dozens of studies since the 1970s showed little to no effect of employment following minimum-wage increases.

“The weight of the evidence shows you can raise the minimum wage without a noticeable effect on employment,” Pfingst told the committee.

The more conservative Washington Policy Center, however, counters by citing studies from Ball State University that said the U.S. lost more than a half million part-time jobs as a result of the federal minimum wage increasing by 40 percent from 2007 to 2009. It also questioned the economic benefits from raising the minimum wage, asserting that the extra earnings would go to basic needs such as groceries or fuels rather than other goods.

Bruce Beckett of the Washington Restaurant Association said that while his group supports a minimum wage increase, it urges the Legislature to be cautious in moving forward on the issue.

“We’re not opposed to a change in the minimum wage,” Beckett said. “(Restaurants) provide the first-time jobs. They provide jobs for the youth. These jobs are very sensitive to the economy. We’re working to see if we can fix some of the problems.”

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