Connecticut has been eclipsed in recent months by the "Fight for $15" movement.

Spurred on by
fast-food worker protests across the nation, several states and cities plan to phase in a $15
minimum wage over the next few years.
Lori Pelletier, president of the state AFL-CIO and a political realist, agreed that the $10.10 per
hour set for next January will likely not be increased this year. Raising the minimum wage could
drive businesses out of state. Seattle was the first to impose $15 and businesses are leaving the
city limits to escape this thing. Many economists worry minimum wage increases tend to reduce
employment, hurting young and less-educated workers the most. Some credible studies find
moderate negative effects while others find none; our best guess is that moderate minimum wage
increases will lead to modest job losses. In a Congressional Budget Office report last year, policy
analysts predicted that Obamas proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour
would raise wages for 16 to 24 million people while eliminating about half a million jobs.
The increases up to $15 are much greater in magnitude than anything we have studied in the
past; because of this, its hard to say if the previous research that found modest negative effects
on employment would hold true, and a reasonable guess is that the effects now will be much
more negative. State and especially local increases of this magnitude will generate big incentives
for employers to move across local borders, especially from central cities to suburbs. For
instance, if Washington, D.C. raises its minimum to $15 (after it is already scheduled to rise to
$11.50 in 2016) while Arlington, Virginia remains at $7.25, the incentives for employers with
many low-wage workers to shift places of business from the former to the latter will be quite
strong.

In Connecticut, several thousand state and municipal employees will benefit from the scheduled
wage increases which are expected to cost the state an additional $3.7 million. In a state that is
among both the highest-earning and has the highest cost of living in the nation, it makes sense to
pay more, particular to the working poor, who put their income back into the economy, said
Derek Thomas, fiscal policy fellow at the nonprofit Connecticut Voices for Children.