Resources


Living Wage: Websites

Kalmanovitz Initiative | Model Just Employment Policy and Guide

This site contains the Model Just Employment Policy and the accompanying Guide to the Model Just Employment Policy (available online and free to download), published by the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. My Just Employment Policy Assessment is based on these documents.

MIT Living Wage Calculator

Created by Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier at MIT, this calculator site provides local (city/county) costs of living, updated regularly from U.S. government data, and is widely used and referred to by institutions considering and updating wage policies and practices.

Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator

This is a calculator created by EPI for calculating a family budget based on location-specific costs of living.

Kalmanovitz Initiative | Celebrating Ten Years of Just Employment at Georgetown

This site contains video of stakeholders reflecting on the origins, history, and impact of Georgetown’s own Just Employment Policy at an event marking 10 years since the policy was first enacted.

National Conference of State Legislatures | State Minimum Wages

The non-partisan NCSL tracks state current minimum wages, state legislation under consideration, and future increases specified by statute.

U.S. Department of Labor | State Minimum Wage Laws

U.S. Department of Labor | State Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees

These two pages contain current and historical data on state minimum wage laws for employees and for tipped employees.


Living Wage: Mass Media

Employer-specific articles

Cook, M. (2021, Jan 28). How Black women organized, won $15 wage at University of Memphis. MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

Quinton, S. (2013, Mar 25). The Trader Joe’s lesson: How to pay a living wage and still make money in retail. The Atlantic. 

Porter, E. (2018, Sep 8). It pays to work at Harvard. The New York Times.

Weise, K. (2018, Oct 2). Amazon to raise minimum wage to $15 for all U.S. workers. The New York Times.

Effects of Minimum wage increases on local economy

Weed, J. (2017, Jul 31). Hotel boom in SeaTac is unfettered by $15 minimum wage. The New York Times. 

Meredith, R. (1996, Oct 1). Politics aside, economy is shrugging off rise to $4.75. The New York Times.

Declining value of Minimum wage

Cooper, D., Gould, E., & Zipperer, B. (2019, Aug 27). Low-wage workers are suffering from a decline in the real value of the federal minimum wage. The Economic Policy Institute.

Weissmann, J. (2013, Jul 16). McDonald’s can’t figure out how its workers survive on minimum wage. The Atlantic.

Lam, B. (2015, Sep 15). The living wage gap: State by state (interactive). The Atlantic.

Podcast and interviews

My SJU colleague and economist Dr. Nancy Fox was interviewed for KYW’s In Depth podcast twice about the a potential increase in the federal minimum wage (Feb 8, 2021) and the effects of the worker shortage on employer’s voluntary increases in the minus wages paid to employees (Jul 2, 2021). 

Fox, N. (2021, Feb 8). The case for $15 an hour and why it’s not about the money [Interview]. KYW Newsradio in Depth. KYW Newsradio, Philadelphia (22 min).

Fox, N. (2021, Jul 2). The worker shortage did what Congress couldn’t: Raise the minimum wage [Interview]. KYW Newsradio in depth. KYW Newsradio, Philadelphia (25 min).


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