Twenty-one states are experiencing a minimum wage increase this year, including:

Virginia and several other states already want to raise the minimum wage again.

But the most concrete evidence shows those mandated wages at high levels lead to more joblessness and outsourcing activities to other states.

David Neumark, a professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, and Peter Shirley, deputy secretary at the West Virginia Department of Revenue, looked at all of the credible studies on the impact of government-mandated minimum wage increases from 1992 to 2021 and found:

Our key conclusions are: (i) there is a clear preponderance of negative estimates in the literature; (ii) this evidence is stronger for teens and young adults as well as the less-educated; (iii) the evidence from studies of directly-affected workers points even more strongly to negative employment effects; and (iv) the evidence from studies of low-wage industries is less one-sided.

They found that about 80% of the credible studies document job losses.