Minimum Wage Is Maximally Complicated in Illinois

Confession time: By the time Election Day 2014 arrived, I was numb to arguments for and against raising the Illinois minimum wage.
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Confession time: By the time Election Day 2014 arrived, I was numb to arguments for and against raising the Illinois minimum wage.

By then, I had seen many studies saying that raising the minimum wage would (A) increase unemployment, (B) speed up job creation or (C) not have much of an effect either way. I had absorbed countless op-ed pieces from both sides either extolling the virtue of providing more income for the lowest-paid employees in the workforce or decrying the number of low-paid workers who would become unemployed as employers cut staff to make up for a higher wage.

Who was right? Attempting to answer that question became an exercise in frustration. In the end, the question became not whether to raise the minimum wage, but how to do it.

Read the rest at Reboot Illinois to find out how minimum wage hikes are moving forward across Illinois.

Speaking of jobs, the November metro and local jobless report says that unemployment in Illinois' 12 metro areas has declined again, for the eighth month in a row. Urbana-Champaign, Rockford and Chicago-Joliet were among the metro areas with the biggest job gains in November, while Peoria, the Quad Cities and Bloomington-Normal had the biggest job losses during the same period of time. Check out all the numbers for the 12 metro areas and Illinois' 102 counties at Reboot Illinois.

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