Today, CBO released an interactive tool that allows users to explore the effects of policies that would increase the federal minimum wage, including the Raise the Wage Act (as passed by the House of Representatives on July 18, 2019) and options CBO analyzed in The Effects on Employment and Family Income of Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage. Users can also create custom policy options to examine how different approaches to changing the minimum wage would affect earnings, employment, family income, and poverty.
In addition, CBO released segments of computer code that can be used to examine how our estimates of employment elasticities (which measure the responsiveness of employment to increases in the minimum wage) vary depending on different policy specifications. Those elasticities were used in the analyses underlying the interactive tool, as well as the report.
This release is one of many that enhance the transparency of our work. We continually seek feedback to make our work as useful and transparent as possible. Please send any comments to communications@cbo.gov.
Phillip L. Swagel is CBO’s Director.