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The Santa Fe City Council recently voted to raise the city’s “living wage” to $10.29 an hour. That puts the minimum wage for Santa Fe workers at the highest in the nation, topping even San Francisco, where the minimum wage is now a nickel less than here in the City Different.
The Journal has supported some increases in the minimum wage, including a proposed big increase in 2006 to boost the state-wide minimum to $7.50 an hour. (Santa Fe’s living-wage law was adopted in 2002, and set at $8.50 an hour, with increases to be implemented in subsequent years.) So far, at least, a series of studies since by the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research hasn’t yielded much evidence that Santa Fe’s higher minimum is damaging the city’s economy. In recent years, the city’s unemployment rate has gone up to be sure, as it has nearly everywhere as a result of the recession. But recently it dipped down again, and throughout the economic downturn it has remained below the statewide jobless rate, as well as jobless rates in New Mexico’s other metropolitan areas, including Albuquerque. The business community has consistently opposed the higher minimums, with the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce director noting recently that he thinks Santa Fe’s minimum now needs to be capped. As it stands now, the minimum wage is supposed to rise in pace with the cost of living. This time around, the increase reflected not just a 2.8 percent rise over 2011 in the consumer price index, but also a similar increase from 2010 that city officials had forgotten to translate into law. The Chamber of Commerce characterizes Santa Fe’s high minimum wage as a “tax” on businesses and warns that the city may price itself out of competitiveness as the wage increases above the $10-an-hour mark. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Others have suggested exempting entry-level employees from the living-wage requirement, for example, to level the field for teenagers seeking their first work experience. When Santa Fe’s minimum wage tops that of San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the nation, it suggests that the moment for reflection may have arrived. Is it wise, given the current economic climate, to continue building automatic increases into the wage law, for example? Would it be helpful to exempt some types of workers from the wage requirement? A new round of evidence from UNM’s economic experts might suggest answers to these and other questions. City officials should make sure they have the facts before they contemplate raising the minimum wage again.
