 My name is Michael Surrock and I'm the Chair of the Economic Development Committee on the NASA. And I wish to go around and introduce themselves. I'm Senator Rennie Brock and we've corresponded and spoken about this. Senator Becca Ballant. Senator Cheryl Hooker. Allison Clarkson. Hi. And we're going to have Senator Brock introduce you and then you can also introduce yourself. But he's the one who made the contact with you. I made the contact with Ryan through Bob Levy as a friend who is the Chair of the Cato Institute in Washington. And Ryan is occupying the chair of the Public Understanding of Economics at the Cato Institute, which is a Washington based think tank and he's done extensive work, some of which you have in terms of bibliography and you can take a look at the footnotes of the written evidence that he provided. He promises that he is not going to read the written evidence in its entirety. I love your footnotes. But talk to you to the committee about the issue. So Ryan, I welcome the committee and thank you for being here. It's my pleasure. So thank you for having me. As you say, I've written extensively on what comes as none of that minimum wage and the policy implications both in the UK and the U.S. I think on bank, I'm going to testify to a point increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour. In my remarks today, I want to emphasize three major objections that I have to the proposal. The first, I think, is the applicant's reasoning for why the wage should be increased to $15 an hour. They're often not well grounded in economics. My second point is going to be that the government is suggesting that very high minimum wage rates due to risk reducing job opportunities and working hours are available to low wage workers, particularly to young. And thirdly, we're actually not too concerned about the minimum wage. And there's not pretty much at minimum wage increases. So when people say, oh, there are other ways of terms adjusted, these have costs. And some of those costs can be particularly risky. So my third point is that the minimum wage today, these days, is almost in times of awkwardity or escalation. Most evidence is prevented for why a 15-dollar minimum wage next period is not due to some idea of market trailing and some respect for what needs to be corrected. So the belief of the minimum wage should reflect or keep up with some other economic variable to give the minimum wage earner more money. Various metrics have been outlined about living costs or activity trends in the economy, or indeed levels of wages such as a lifetime worker earning the minimum wage to pass this thumb-pulling threshold. And in my note, I analysed all of these different comparisons. And I urge you to read that if you haven't already. But the key takeaway is that comparing minimum wage rates to any of these metrics I think is misleading and it used to make the policy could lead to bad outcomes. So living costs, for example, are obviously incredibly important for families, I think much under discussed in the policy development. But it would make no sense to mix the minimum wage, how much individual families have to pay for rent or child hair costs or clothing, because that would completely divorce pay rates from terms of the ability to pay or the value of the work undertaken. Likewise, comparing incomes and some of working full-time on minimum wage with existing policy thresholds, ignores that we have a host of other anti-positive programs, such as the only income tax credit, which many economists deal with, that's a policy of reducing poverty. So I think when you guys are making policy on this, you should ignore those sorts of comparisons and really just consider one thing. How in your view would increase in the minimum wage effects, but on a slave market? Now increase in the minimum wage obviously raises the incomes of minimum wage workers who maintain their jobs and hours. But by raising some labor costs, it also inhibits the impact of the number of jobs and hours of work employed in demand, or the working conditions or goods and services they offer. Now you have to weigh those two effects, and I believe that requires considering both economic efforts for what their side is likely to be, but also a sort of policy structure from your perspective on how you weigh up those different factors. So in my submission, I made the same work for thinking about that, but the second point I want to make today is about the current evidence state. Now it's true, economists are divided on the risk in the minimum wage height. The policy decade seems to stand to the back and forth on whether the minimum wage height reduced the number of jobs or hours worked available for low wage workers or not. But often lost in this discussion, especially in the minimum wage aspect, is that the majority of published papers do find that modest minimum wage increases generate small but still negative effects on employment opportunities. On that, the majority of papers still find that. Economists are divided on surveys on the risk of a greater minimum wage height because some are willing to trade off the reduction in opportunities for higher pay to others, but the majority of published papers do find a still but negative effect. Just as importantly, a college police with a level of minimum wage, still massive, but just because there's been evidence from some other minimum wage height that raising it to $9 an hour in a big city didn't generate negative effect doesn't mean we can extrapolate from that the same that could be done in minimum wage in Vermont. And the second truth is these different results are driven by different research methodologies. That is the area of experience in minimum wage height with closed geographic comparisons for those that have been done in restaurants and to find smaller negative effects, those controlling for other shops, looking at the broader economy or using longer time periods and to find larger numbers. Where economists agree, I think, is that a lot of the research does show that, geographically, particularly teenagers tend to suffer the worst at any point in their life. But that suggests that when the minimum wage is raised, one response I found is to substitute young, inexperienced workers in favor of older and more experienced workers. So that was my rule case on the historic literature. But what is important to her in mind, with most of those studies, is that labor-accepting change is much less ambitious than a $15 minimum wage proposed here given Vermont's economic factor. However, it turns out that an increase in minimum wage at a high level is therefore crucial to assess the wisdom of this proposal. Now that there are a number of studies that are useful to you here in informing the way you think about the proposal given Vermont's unique characteristics. The first is the University of Washington study on Seattle, which has increased in its minimum wage and set to $15 an hour by 2022. Now in a major research paper last year, assessing the effects of these different studies, economists found that the increase from $9.27 to $11.25 resulted in no significant change in labor market outcomes. This increased to $13 the next year, reduced hours of work by low wage workers by 7%. In fact, employers cut back close on the number of low wage employees and the hours they worked, relative to a weighted average of the surrounding region. So, indeed, with a major effect on jobs and hours we need economists found that even though the minimum wage raised, the average low wage work that they found, that they estimate was $74 a month worked off in terms of their earned income. There's that reduction in the number of jobs compared to a count of actual and the number of hours worked. But this is important because the minimum wage proposed for Vermont would be much more intensive relative to average wages than even that being in Seattle. So, we might expect a different page with a conclusion that they value visual effects in Vermont than you can see in Seattle and I think that should be of course the core. The second thing to consider is the business composition of the economy. Quite a different point in Vermont is that it's more heavily with smaller medium-sized businesses than in all other states except Montana and Wales. But briefly, it's more than medium-sized business businesses in the state are held in place of assistance, retail, and accommodation and food services. These are all industries that will be projected to be strongly affected by the minimum wage crisis. So, what might happen? Well, one study from Harvard Business School examined restaurants in San Francisco and their minimum wage went up significantly to $13 in 2016 from 2008 to, say, $9. And that estimated that every dollar rise in the minimum wage increased the probability of an average rated restaurant closing by 15%. The minimum wage paid unsurprisingly and more likely to drive out modest new businesses that are currently on the margins of profitability. The last other thing that I think is almost specific is evidence from two reasons of study which also suggests that minimum wage types within a state affect migration or commuting patterns. These two cases found that when minimum wage increased, those who were to be more likely to leave or avoid moving to those states were more likely to leave out those to the person who worked. That again consists of the traditional economy of what the effects of minimum wage types might be. But given that in the past, because we're talking about shrinking and elderly population, you might want to think twice about the policy that evidence to get could lead to more economic activity and, indeed, people shifting out first. So, that's how I see the evidence in how it is for the most part. My point is about there being no pre-luxury. Because I know some economists play as well that can adjust in other ways. They can improve productivity, they can raise prices. So, it's important to start what that means in practice. So, as a small retailer, there's a new ownership order employing a good number of minimum wage employees. You hide the minimum wage for $50 an hour. That's significantly raised for firm business costs if it maintains all the same business practices. But how about you as a business owner react to this increase in cost? Well, one response might be to allow the staff member to insert a small requirement for the exchange of over 10 hours by hour or so a day of time spent on a new business. That would be the equivalent of reducing employment. And money in the market itself can change the entire society who are still at the level. A second adjustment might be to make changes to the composition of yourself. Given the high minimum wage hits your profitability, you might as well need more customer-friendly and experienced staff members whose presence could be shaped by bringing more customer loyalty and failure. So, that might mean laying up those two youngsters to hire them their first job in the place where they're older or experienced workers. That, of course, might also act as a direct cost to the pay by bringing in more customers. But there's so much to turn over cost to your family in terms of looking for those people. There are three costs of diminished opportunities for the young. Another adjustment might be simply to try to make a system employee work up or reduce other costs to change the business culture, grasp the needs of the target. And that will, in fact, be a cost for the workers by working with their workers. It might even become more profitable to automate certain jobs. In the past decade, we've seen a proliferation of supermarket checkout machines, iPads for all the things in restaurants, used at apps to replace human employees for various activities, like ticket booking. So, what we say is really good. They eventually respond to sell checkout services for developing an app that allows people to pick up on, pick up from the store or out of stores in certain parts currently done in town. So, again, that's what we're having in case of an entry-level job opportunity. So, what are the other options? Well, you might say, need to attract more customers to invest in marketing or changing the product lines or whatever. But that, in itself, is, again, costly. And if it allows you to do that, then you might have already to configure the internet before the minimum wage was raised and there's no reason why you couldn't have done it. What about raising prices? Well, if a company's building demand of nowhere else to go, then it might be able to do that. So, that's going across the same boundary and you can't see it because it's stuck in some of the same products and undercutting it, particularly given their minimum wage is just $7.25 a month. And anyway, even if you did raise prices, that has distributional effect and changes other demand tax to the rest of the world on time. It makes some customers poorer, at least when they've left income after buying the goods, particularly if those on fixed wages do get unaffected by the minimum wage height. And that would reduce their remaining income to go and touch in other goods and services in the Lamar economy. And so, it just destroys the job losses as well as well. Now, finally, if a company might decide whether the business model we need is possible to change and they have no power to change prices, in that case, they'll have to take a second for their profit market. And if they were on the brink of profitability, they'd have to push them to close it. But if not, the forward profit margin might be absorbed. But that would then be for other new companies to enter in the market and hit the non-containers down the line. So, the point I'm trying to make here is, yet, in theory, there are lots of other channels that adjustment firms can think about to control their costs or adjust their business model. But none of those are costless or intimate. And let's leave removing that minimum wage tax for all the rationing and passing up on current profit and halting opportunities that could be realised by next grade in their wage rate because the minimum wage tax will be gone by summer. And unfortunately, my reason for this is, while the modest minimum wage tax you don't have has major effects on jobs, there are a few effects on the local workers disproportionately. We can have them from staff who suggest the very kind minimum wage rate are particularly risky for the opportunities for low wage workers. The fact that that can be said, I think, in conclusion is that this policy is very, very risky. But thank you for letting us have time to have these new questions. Appreciate that very, very much. Thank you. I was hoping that when we started off that you'd give us a little background about your position presently and the KNO Institute. Good. Sure, I'm currently the R&D sharp chef of the I love to be R&D sharp chef of the economics of the case in Virginia with regard to the economics educational position of funding by an endowment from the case in the U.S. We certainly know a lot better. In the U.S. I work for the Institute of Economics which is a free market educational charity in the U.S. and my background in terms of my schooling is that I was at the University of Cambridge where I obtained first of all from a degree in economics and then I'm not really an economist. I'm from the same university. Thank you. Yeah, the KNO Institute is a a little different thing so it's committed to a different field of individual loyalty or free market when it comes to direct and honest policy. My role in the KNO Institute is kind of quite shallow like I do my own things but we do have special things in a number of different economic areas but I do a lot more micro-economic analysis focusing on labor markets regulations, price controls and so forth and this will move as well. Thank you. So there's this debate going on about the middle age among economists and all these studies the comment that KNO is a libertarian think tank in some ways does that mean because it wasn't necessarily getting this from your testimony that you oppose all minimum wages or just steep increases in the minimum wage. Is there a role in your modding for a minimum wage in law? I think there are two positions there. I'm giving you an example so a right-wing libertarian might say all individuals should have the right to freely contract their labor whatever the consequences and any minimum wage is fundamental eroding of that right the right to free contract and as such that would be one position. Another position might be what I call libertarian consequentialism given the balance of evidence we recognize that looking at things modest minimum wage has large negative consequences on labor markets but perhaps could deal with some issues with monopsony power on labor markets but that if you look at the evidence minimum wage is about a certain level the European has the classic impact on the classical comments you're predicting on the reducing labor demand. Now very effectively economists generally think that wage is a global effect on the interaction of supply and demand so that's the reason that if you spent a minimum wage below where that equilibrium point of which supplies the demand would have an effect much more effect on wage or labor demand but if you say above the market effort I understand your question I think we understand there's two different views I'm more of a concentration of libertarian undercurrent to admit that it's unfair that previous modest increases in the minimum wage have a dramatic impact I think they have reduced opportunities particularly teenagers and very very low skilled workers but I think it's a different type of fish when you're talking about the longer the better and you're talking about raising the minimum wage and only like the most like a few dollars an hour. Thank you. So I have one more question and I'll throw it to others. Struck in your presentation how you're very concerned with the consequences of a steep increase if this is considered a steep increase which I assume you argue in terms of employability and hours work and jobs available I didn't hear anything about so you're concerned about the workers and what this will impact on but I didn't hear anything about the present case scenario where so many people are working below a livable wage which is what we need right now and how we might address those so it's all about potential loss of jobs and loss of hours and we seem to be directed towards helping these people and that's what we're trying to do as well. Okay, that's the third question that I have on this by the world's counter area In college, really those things that control in crisis are the best ways to implement those policies and one of the reasons when livable wages are being allowed to decline relative to the growth in average wage in both the last 30 years is because they pretty much weren't considered a very good or very targeted policy reduction tool lots of people who own livable wages are paying for households which we tend to think about as the best means of reducing policies and that's why I'm going to say for a long period paying for that trade off and I consider the ending a much more targeted and less damaging to the prospect of employability means of delivering higher income to low wage households now what I would say is that I absolutely believe the living standard of these are the components of the income distribution in fact one of my reasons is to analyse the cost of living and the cost to families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution of existing regulations and interventions that I believe is guided in the housing sector the childcare sector the fuel sector the protection of them in terms of tax and I hope to that for the cost of all of those administrative regulations cost typical for a family anywhere between 800 dollars a year and a half thousand for a year so I prefer policy makers to pay for those under some of that damage I think the takeaway then is that certain individuals for whatever reason sadly the economic standard not the value of family the economic standard does not allow some families to leave a decent standard of living and the question is then what do you do about it and my first point would be under the damage that you would raise the living cost you have to basically doing it on a clean and friendly with capital and spending or raising the minimum wage when you say the raising and the wages of capital what you really face is the full cost of that social objective to be placed on the consumer in the shareholder of the company now it's not entirely clear to me why that makes economic sense the ambition of the social ambition and when there is a very real risk that taking the full burden about social responsibility and business could damage the opportunity for the very people who are trying to help I appreciate that I think that is a tipping point because I I mean I really like earned income tax credits so if we could do more of that that may be preferable to the minimum wage but I do that as being spread on all the taxpayers over the lot and I think what you just said agrees with that whereas minimum wage may be targeting more the businesses and consumers so I think in some ways we need to get both and it's not as disagreeable go ahead no I pick up from that you asked a question I mean you said the cost of the minimum wage would be borne by someone currently it's being borne by us poverty is being borne by us it's a huge burden on the public purse and you know we have to balance the public purse versus what it actually costs people who are employing these people that is you know is it fair for employers to really burden the state and the public taxpayers to help people live their costs for heating for food for housing so whose responsibility is it is a good question you're talking about being a consequentialist but you don't also talk about the market rising to meet the challenge and you know the upper valley yes New Hampshire has a federal minimum wage but nobody works at that level the market has driven people earning well over the minimum wage all along the upper valley and I guess how would you propose we close the wage gap how would you propose that we reduce poverty and increase wages for the that have been stagnant for workers for you know over 30 years I mean it's a huge challenge and we can debate who is affected and who's working in minimum wage I haven't heard one but you know you talked about the families that are in fact not low wage workers working in minimum wage well that's not what we've heard so you know I just would love to know what is your solution to this raising the minimum wage and if it isn't having a whole impoverished sector in our state earn a low wage how do you propose lifting people out of poverty and reducing the pressure on the public first just a small small question from Senator Clarkson so it could be a thesis I can't easily in the long term the only way to raise the the claim is to in general agreement with the markets clearly require thinking long term about the educational opportunities in the non human capital accumulation the broader business environment and the life you would prefer to deal with in best in the non so there are all sorts of things to do in the long term I accept that you know in certain areas we've got to keep short term culture as I said my first step would be not the space level but the federal level the greater cost of living for many poor families beyond what they need to be so you already seen that in terms of talking about zoning and land use planning with all great guns we know to make sure they're not housing available at affordable prices for families I've been to Toronto on many families and there's some evidence of the direction that we're travelling in in terms of imposing more occupational licensing requirements and other things child care is raising the cost for child care for example there's things that we're dealing on there's all these different things but beyond that I do think you have the basic dilemma that I outlined which is that throughout history this is not a problem I've seen now there have been individuals who have had enough opportunities for their education and their overall work experience that the economic value is reduced that would not provide income in the market on the institution to live a decent and comfortable life and then we have to consider the clarity which is what it presents to help people in that situation the problem I have with the legitimacy which is kind of finishing up by government data that the ways that these people are paid I don't see how that's going to improve that student act of assimilation and acquiring the skills which is going to give a lot of them we talk about in the made work of a lot and if you're a minimized worker for life but actually for lots of these government and lay-sealed people there's an entry-level position which teaches them different skills dealing with customers that actually make the form of life that you're going to be employable or have better prospects in the future so yeah this is a difficult question policy is a difficult question I think we need a multi-pronged approach you have to look at long-term educational policy as a business environment and get those two things like that out fairly long ways to deal with the problems I think you've got to consider the cost of living and ways the government can't erase the cost of living or ways in which you can support expanding the supply side of housing and child care and other important living cost of people but then beyond that you have to face the dilemma should it be the government setting in to help or should it be businesses and most economists through history are controlling crises in a very dangerous way of trying to implement social opening back to Nigeria honestly and frankly through the public let me just ask you a question to follow on some of the things that you had mentioned about the consequences of actions by government your phrase was there is no free lunch and so if government provides assistance whether it be welfare programs, income tax credit or other things that government does the contrary position is that business does it through the increase in the minimum wage but does that have a consequence also and is that consequence potentially inflationary and if it's inflationary what about the people who are outside of the workforce who aren't earning the senior citizen on social security the person who is on public assistance whose income is not raised by increased minimum wage what effects have you seen in work that you've done on that contrary view a good question the minimum wage isn't inflationary in the sense that economists usually talk about inflation which is a general increase in the price level by the amount of money in the economy trading business but suddenly minimum wage has to change and given consumer price things that you've done change here on the economy will raise the raise the consumer prices that are rarely inflationed by the people there in the moment yeah that clearly has distributional effects as you alluded to my faith from the economic literature some companies particularly in markets where more market concentrations do pass through some of the cost increase prices if they know they've got captured customers and demand is not very responsive to price changes and clearly it's quite a go up for business services that individuals on fixed incomes will buy the after spending the remainder of income they'll have a better business for the children from buying products that they otherwise would have bought so yeah that's on the welfare of those on fixed incomes that the standards won't adjust with the result of the minimum wage change but that's quite the broader point I was making unless you presume that they've constantly improved their profitability through raising wages at the moment but for whatever reason they just arm the living with free money on the street then raising the minimum wage will have consequences and the question with you you guys have to ask yourself how are those costs and consequences worth it for the trade off of people and keep their jobs and hours so just from an economist one of you following up on that question is raising the minimum wage for low income workers a major driver in the cost of living increase or are we talking more about housing costs, energy those kinds of things versus a small segment of the population getting a bump in their minimum wage you know I think at the end of the day it's not a major driver in the cost of living increase of a day it changes relative prices in the economy it doesn't change the overall price at least but some people not consuming goods otherwise would have cost-producing demand for other products most of the inflationary most of the price increase in fact tends to be sometimes food outlets sometimes some retailers that they've got not many competitors in the area could raise prices food that affects the prices of some products but I'm going to go as far as saying that it would be a major driver in the cost of living increases you know I just want to go back to one thing you said we'll take sort of agree with but I think here it's incomplete you said ultimately what we have to do is raise productivity and what we heard is that the productivity has been pretty good over the last few decades in the United States anyhow but the benefits of that increase in productivity has not flowed down to the lower income wages so is it that we have to raise productivity and figure out a way somehow that productivity is attributable to in part to the lower income workers so organically wages will go up as a reflection of that increase in productivity as opposed to technology just causing well I think I think I think those comparisons will look at the aggregate cost of the whole economy as a reason for increasing wage rates particularly for minimum wage workers is very misguided analysis and I gave a simple example in my written submission that if you look at the food services industry in isolation for example which one would imagine is much better reflective of the typical minimum wage worker industry that is the whole economy what legal part of the food service sector is only written by just 0.4% a year over the past three years now if you repair the minimum wage in real terms so you adjust this for inflation from 1987 to 2017 what you have found is that it would have increased by 13% if it attracts productivity in the food services industry so it would have gone from 7 model 15 in 1987 adjusted to today's price to 8.6 per day and that time in the federal minimum wage so if you use that as a reason because the federal minimum wage should have been increased if it attracts this proxy for minimum wage workers productivity but actually your current minimum wage would be above the level linked to productivity for those minimum wage workers so the danger of using that as a productivity is that they don't take into consideration that every industry has different productivity performance and by raising the wage for cost of food for the whole economy it's way of us what would also occur as a result of natural productivity improvements that's when you really might be that buy in terms of your location so I recognize there's a broader debate here about the extent to which the wage using the market currently attracts for the productivity performance across the United States some of that I think is very stated once you look at total compensation and you include money put to health insurance and you incorporate the taxes and transfers as well some of that is not quite as stark as divergence as the one would expect but I think it's very dangerous to look at the aggregate productivity performance for the economy and take from that that one can increase the minimum wage-rave impunity because minimum wage workers are not necessarily representative of the average worker in the economy that is seen as productivity improvement thank you Mr. Bourne I'm wondering when you cite Joseph Sabia or Sabia's work can you tell me where geographically he conducted his work or where those studies were from I'm looking at the footnotes I don't see it referenced but we seem to be getting evidence counter to what what he's discovering so I'd like to go back and look at that do you know offhand yes Mr. Sabia works for the whole of the United States I believe okay I acknowledge that hopefully representative of the population I would say we're talking about a high-income system a high-income system I think unfortunately I have the time to conduct my own independent research on understanding I believe we have to make the broader case that maybe historically the economy studies have found that many minimum wage-rave or at least above the minimum wage aren't from all households now that would be many off as well but then you get a lot of people who are affected by those teenagers young adults who are living at home with these different housing costs so we can kind of make that point short even in a minimum wage-rave so we practice a lot of that knowledge with me my second question is when you're talking about how employers are going to reduce the number of hours often to minimum wage workers some of the numbers that we saw as though that may be true for individual employers those employees are able to find work at other places that are also employing minimum wage workers and in the end they actually come out slightly ahead so again I'm wondering I think Vermont in some ways is an anomaly on lots of points because we have a lot of minimum wage workers who are actually highly educated and are surrounding neighbors so I'm just curious if you have seen studies that say the opposite as well and why that might be well the reactive study is really interesting because whereas most studies use certain factors as a proxy for minimum wage historically studies that use the response industry as a proxy for the minimum wage industry the reactive study that I thought would be actually uncommon and it also looks at low it counts at low wage workers who have been low up to 90 dollars an hour they try to catch the effects of people moving into higher paying jobs as well so those results I think about would be actually on the hours and job losses are in a very very highly productive environment we have to be very very highly productive economy but they found that big effect and I think two reasons why that's really important and why that study was really eye on me the first reason is that they also found that the initial minimum wage height didn't have much impact at all so it reached us to just the level of which the minimum wage effect does matter and secondly they were able to replicate which found that the restaurant sector didn't have, didn't show signs of any negative employment and the reason that's important is because it suggests that previous analogies of minimum wage height based on the restaurant industry that found no effect and extrapolated to that state that minimum wage doesn't have an effect on jobs may have been ignoring that there's something unique about the restaurant sector and actually an economy wage can have negative consequences elsewhere it wouldn't be picked up otherwise Thank you Mr. Board Thank you Anything else from Mr. Ward? So I want to thank you very much I mean we may have different views on this but you're very well spoken and I don't think you want to exaggerate anything from your position I appreciate that so we have a healthy debate I think it would be useful to read the paper in its entirety for those members who have not yet done so and in particular a number of the underlying studies that are referenced here would be useful and to know more about Mr. Board if you go to the website www.cato.org you'll get a more detailed curriculum as well as a list of other articles some of which are on the minimum wage that he has authored Thank you Senator Thank you Have a good day Mr. Chair I'll be right back Secretary Lerich I know it a little bit sick Good morning I'm losing my voice sorry if that happened for the record I'm Brenda Siegel I live in New Fane, Vermont and I just want to before I get started I just want to I know a couple things from the testimony we just heard the examples that he used all of them didn't reach the livable wage so I think that that's really important because how it impacts the economy matters and if we reach the livable wage and the other thing that I want to note was that last year I believe this committee heard from an economist who said that it might negatively impact I believe 900 jobs but would positively impact between 65,000 and 90,000 Vermonters I believe the increase in the minimum wage so I just want to note those two things that may be different about Vermont than the studies that he had here are the copies so first I want to thank all of you for passing S40 last session and taking this bill up swiftly this session I'm the executive and artistic director of the Southern Vermont Dance Festival in Brattle area which is designed as a long-term economic driver for the area as a response to Tropical Storm Marine in which my son and I lost all of our belongings I also formally ran a pre-professional training program for modern dancers I teach political classes at Compass School and Subcontract at Mount Stone Additionally I recently have founded an organization that helps low-income people run for office and am working with a leadership team to help heal the opioid epidemic I also have been searching for full and part-time employment to meet my family's needs in addition I am a food stamp recipient I receive a section 8 voucher I have fuel assistance and Medicaid I strongly support raising the minimum wage $15 an hour as quickly as possible this needs to be the case tomorrow but a bill that raises it to 2024 is a start and it needs to happen New York, Massachusetts and Maine will be at $15 an hour sooner than 2024 I believe that the latest nearby state is 2023 I would be concerned about moving at a slower timeline in light of that fact I'm also aware that there is a concern that New Hampshire holds a federal minimum wage as we just heard and therefore businesses might leave I first would offer that I don't think we need to be in the race to the bottom with New Hampshire and I would counter that if we have a worker shortage in this state wouldn't it then stand to reason that if our minimum wage increases folks living on the border will be more likely to choose to work in Vermont there are a lot of reasons for people to live, work and grow their businesses in Vermont and I would propose that we need our families to thrive so that businesses can survive, not the other way around the impacts of poverty trickle up as opposed to the benefits of wealth trickling down those impacts now affect our businesses, our schools and our overall state a $15 an hour minimum wage would allow the Monters like myself to have stronger purchasing power help build up our small businesses reduce our burden on taxpayers and ultimately put an estimated $120 million directly in our Vermont into Vermont's pockets that number changed in this last year I believe I grew up in an upper middle class family I know the difference between the opportunities that my son has versus the one that I had the ones that I had I understand where I have safety nets that others in my position do not I see the difference between my own responsibilities versus that of a family who is not struggling to make ends meet in my own family in most financial moments we have had to cut corners on necessary household items I have skipped meals so that my son could eat a healthy meal or even so that I could free up enough money to buy my son some shoes when his head holds in them these are just some examples of sacrifices I have made and what is important to note is that my struggle does not come close to that of fellow Vermonters some have said that we shouldn't raise the wage because of the benefits cliff issue however this cliff is a problem today keeping a sub livable wage does not protect those of us who receive benefits it just prevents us from having a way out I believe that it is with the best of intentions that people are afraid to raise the wage out of fear that people like me will lose their benefits but I am here to tell you that while that problem is very real it is real now today and was real when the wage was lower as well it is a separate issue that certainly intersects with wage increase but it should not prevent any legislators saying yes on these bills that come before you in fact the increase in local spending caused by higher minimum wage along with a stronger tax base will give you a flexibility to address issues just like these we should be fixing the problem of the benefits cliff by properly funding our benefits program so people like me are not held back from taking raises, promotions or more hours and we should bring the minimum wage to a livable wage we can and must do both I am very concerned about the sub minimum wage assigned to students in this bill my son works in order to cover costs that his peers parents can cover for their children luckily his employer from the spring through the fall does not pay him less during the school year the weekdays that he works he has to do his homework at 9pm and often doesn't get to bed until 12 or 1 then gets up at 6am to get himself to school he is a near straight A student and keeping his grades up was a real challenge this past fall he has been unable to find work this winter which has increased household financial burden but admittedly lessened his own my niece began paying most of her expenses at the age of 16 she walked in her high school graduation with her class this past June but is still completing her senior year work today her school work was interrupted in part by the death of her brother my nephew in March but before that she was already working full time keeping up with school work was near impossible imagine what that would be like if she was making 3 dollars less per hour than others with her same job that would mean she would likely have had to work another part time job and likely would have felt pressure to drop out of school kids like my son who helped to cover some expenses would have to work more days meaning more late nights and less sleep likely lower grades kids like Audrey and Ajna are forced to leap hurdles that are only put in front of kids from low income and marginalized families and communities it is important to remember that there are families in our state with much greater hurdles and even more barriers than the ones at my own family and to add more burden to them as they try to succeed would be unconscionable to move a sub to a sub minimum wage year round for Vermont's youth can only increase the barriers for folks from low income families experience a better choice would be to rectify the law that allows employers to pay child labor at a lower rate by eliminating some of the wage from the bill before you I want to briefly speak to the idea that was put to this committee by the administration recently that low wage workers likely just don't have the fire in their bellies I am quite sure that it would be difficult to make an argument after my run for governor this summer that I lack a fire in my belly the truth is that the low wage workers that I know do not lack fire in fact they are the most fiery, strong usually women that I know they fight for their families their kids and the person that is most often is left behind is themselves as they take care of everyone else's needs and there isn't enough to take care of their own I want to see a Vermont where our economy thrives I want to see a Vermont where those at the top contribute their fair share and those at the bottom are empowered to participate in our economy in a way that they currently are not able our state has the power to continue to be a national leader in the movement for economic justice and equity while building a stronger economy today I'm here as a low income Vermonter as I was last session and a business owner to say yes to raising the wage to $15 an hour as soon as possible and no to a sub minimum wage thank you for your leadership on this very important issue I just have one question I think I asked the same question last year we are being told does a guy in all the public benefit programs that minimum wage workers may qualify that by raising the minimum wage by a dollar may result in 50 cents in loss of benefits how do you react? and I think my answer last year is the same as this year which is what I just heard is I'm making 50 cents more an hour that I have the economic power to decide what I do with it and I think a falsehood that happens with low wage workers is that we aren't intelligent or educated and we do not know what to do with our money and we do not know how to handle money and the truth is that if you actually wash the way a low wage worker can stretch $5 you would know that they're some of the most strongest I've written an op-ed on in gurus out there the reality is that we want our own economic buying power we want to decide for ourselves where we spend our money and we are we do not lack the intelligence or the fire to do so just a quick question how many employees do you have in your business? well so the dance festival is a festival so it happens throughout the summer I did go back last year when I was running and find out if we and so it's actually all subcontracted work because it's once a year and I found out that we do in fact pay a low wage to everybody who is who is working for us in the summer any other questions? okay right on schedule we'll break till 11.15 thank you hello this is jenette hi jenette this is senator michael stuart chair of the senate economic development committee how are you? hi you're breaking up okay I'll try and speak louder is that better? that's much better hi my name is michael stuart chair of the senate economic development committee and we have four other senators on the committee senator clarkson from Windsor county, senator hooker from rutherland county, senator valet from windham county and senator ruff from frankly county we're learning a little bit late that doesn't mean you have to rush your testimony but if you want to introduce yourself and get started and tell us what you think about s23 great well first of all thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today my name is jenette ruff and I'm a researcher and policy analyst for the national employment law project we're also known as nuk nuk is a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy organization specialized in employment policies so by the end of today you will have my written testimony where I will assess our support for 50,000 minimum wage in vermouth and also we make the case in data written testimony against the youth wage and for my oral testimony I like to focus on the youth wage we are definitely supporting 15 we think that this is a really great important step towards a more robust wage level in vermouth and we are in support of that but we also are concerned about the inclusion of a harmful provision and bill that would encourage students from the full minimum wage and would allow employers to pay them $3 less than the full minimum wage so we urge the legislature to reject this and any other proposals to adopt the law youth wage first I believe you have heard from from the government policy institute in the past but there are definitely very many benefits to S23 I don't need to go into details about that because you've heard that before but there will be about 87,000 workers will be benefiting from this policy but in these policies of 15,000 minimum wage has been adopted like we know in this work state so far none of them have included a lower minimum wage as part of the the package so out of those work states with a 50,000 minimum wage and without a young worker exception I'm sure that yesterday New Jersey signed a bill for 15 without that type of exception as of what year? yesterday no I know but it didn't go up to 15 immediately did it? oh no no sorry the bill was signed but obviously there will be set increments of 15 especially the case when does it get to 15? for New Jersey I believe by 2024 but I would have to double check with you thank you and New Jersey actually might have been through 2026 through 2025 there are several steps to other workers but also not only does that happen in New Jersey $15 minimum wage without a new exception but so was the case in California and New York back in 2016 they adopted $15 minimum wage without a new exception in Massachusetts just last year they also did the same there was a proposal in Massachusetts for a new exception but that was not adopted in the end so we really urged the legislature to not be the first thing to adopt a lower wage alongside a 15 minimum wage can I just interrupt you for a second? sure just by way of background I understand you're suggesting we not be the first state to have a sub-minimum wage coupled with $15 minimum wage but are there other states that have a youth wage presently associated with their minimum wage? there are a few and I don't have full table in front of me but they usually are temporary meaning that they are not permanent they may be for the first 90 days or for the first 30 days something along that line I don't think I recall the state that has imposed the permanent new exception okay we'll get that thank you so let me just go through quickly through the case for why you should not adopt a new exception to the 15 minimum wage can you make up only 100% of workers who will benefit from the 15 minimum wage in Vermont so given there are small numbers the benefits of the new wage will be very modest for most businesses in the state but even though the benefits are modest and teams are only a small percentage of workers who will benefit this policy could actually be hard for young adult workers as it could incentivize the increasing number of employers to hire young workers in place of adults and to adopt a higher turnover staffing model to maintain a youth workforce and direct consequences of this policy would be to drive down wages for the wages of workers now about the high turnover business model businesses that commonly adopt a high turnover staffing model models are fast food and retail chains often these employers pay some of their lowest wages for all those being high profits according to some estimates the rate is high is 200% on an annual basis that is the equivalent of stating there is an entire staff every six months also national change does not dominate the business landscape in Vermont some of you I'm sure are aware are actively seeking to enter expand or enhance their presence of the state so hence the rejection of the youth wage is imperative even in Vermont a youth wage would not only benefit large fat food and retail chains of expensive teens but it's not just could also be fair to small businesses and good chances employers in the state who may already be struggling to compete with big businesses while treating their employers of an age fairly and a youth wage would harm college found teens from middle income families who hope to use their earnings to pay for some of their college expenses as you are sure are aware young people struggle to make to meet the increasing cost of secondary education and although their proposed expansion of Vermont's currently unworked or exemption with the benefits of secondary school students this policy could not have a negative impact on college found young workers from middle and middle income families who work long hours during the summer to stay for college approximately 61% of workers for a $15 minimum wage in Vermont are from families with low to moderate income of $50,000 so that really I think these are fortunate of the the benefits of a $15 minimum wage in general to low and middle income families and young workers would be part of those families high tuition and decreasing funds for grants and colleges for many college students to work long hours which can compromise the graduation rates earning at least $15 per hour would enable many college students to provide the same money for tuition and expenses which hopefully would allow them to submit their work hours to 20 out of the week once they are in college choosing to do the opposite if some high school students from $50 minimum wage could hurt their career prospects in the future as they would be among the students who work close to full time in college which puts them a risk of dropping out and one last point that I would like to suggest to you is that nationally approximately half of all 18 and 19 year old are students enrolled in two or four year college or university programs and the overwhelming majority of them about 70% work as they struggle with license tuition and cost of living in the process of mired by crashing students on debt those are the points that I wanted to bring up to you, thank you Can you we spent a lot of time talking about the sub minimum wage can you talk about a little bit more about the minimum wage we are seeking to raise here well yes of course and again we are completely in support of a $15 minimum wage in Vermont I was just in touch with the public policy institute that they have new estimates which I will include in my written testimony as I mentioned before about $80,000 workers which is about close to 30% of the workforce with benefits and the average worker according to their estimates who works full time year round or sorry who works year round would make about $1,700 additional earnings in 2018 dollars which is equal about almost 7% which is pretty significant for workers who are barely making any commute could you I'm sorry I'm having a little difficulty hearing because of my own hearing but you said $80,000 that's a new number from who? $80,000 $80,000 that's a number from the economic policy institute the minimum wage workers and she said 30% of them what are their source source her source was the economic policy institute okay yeah I don't know if you caught the last thing that I said which is that there are the additional on any annual basis in 2018 dollars for these workers is about $17,000 which would equal almost a 7% which is significant so that is something to be supported by now by the economic policy institute and any other organization that cares about workers are you saying a 7% increase in wages between now 24? no sorry that's the equivalent it would be almost like the equivalent of it compared to quite workers or physical workers for months starting now so that would be by the end of the basic period okay and one last that the economic policy institute shares with me is that in total wages would be with an increase of about $120,000 in 2018 dollars so it is the value of last year which obviously this would be among the three minimum that 87,000 workers would benefit which is again significant it's not an exponential increase it won't make anybody wealthy it will definitely help workers who are struggling right now we have this it gets a little complicated we have the issue of what percentage wages are going up in any given year what percentage of wages are going up over five years how that's affected in real dollars where it's non-inflation adjusted so we'll get to the bottom of what those numbers are I know that I think that the amount that the wage would go up without adjustment for inflation is about six or seven percent a year so that $1,700 additional earnings would be I don't know if it's a year I think that's your life that's an average over as a year so the second increase is the first step will be a smaller increase and then once you figure out the second year increase there will be a slightly larger increase because of the way that it's calculated so these increases the $1,700 is a significant average of those stocks per year $1,700 per year and so that's equivalent to seven percent right but remember that that's just an average of the various increases so in the actual the actual increase as the estimate suggests will be it would depend on the whether it's the first step or the second step or the third report but it should be a little bit but it could have a bit of an average of maybe nine because that would be a good sense of how it could benefit workers Senator Clarkson has a question for you I miss what organization you work with on the law project and I sometimes will ask the economic health institute which is a really great partner of us and so where are you today well I'm at home actually I don't know what I mean where is the national employment law project and where do you work if you live working DC oh yes yes my office is in DC I made office in New York in another one in California so one of the things we've heard and one of the things I thought you were going to address is the major reason to not have a sub minimum wage is who is affected by poverty and the over we heard from testimony last week from voices for Vermont's children that the most at risk for high poverty to 20 girls in Vermont if they and that they contribute a huge amount to low income family household income um so for me I'm very keen on not having a sub minimum wage and and having them for all the reasons you talk about not only will it consent businesses to perhaps uh hire more young people and not adults but also I'd love to have young people who are still in school and doing these additional jobs earn enough so that they maybe can work less so that they can attend and be more engaged in school and extracurriculars and yet also contribute to family income um so that I thought at some point you were going to address the alarming rate of poverty among 18 to 24 year olds in this state well I don't have the specific number so we do know that the wage you can put some of this at risk of poverty uh in adverse health outcomes and homelessness there are those studies and I wish I had that in front of me but there are studies who just made those points and I can try to find that you can go on our website and find it we have it in our testimony but it is the testimony was the highest rate of poverty is among young adults 18 to 24 which is for me one of the greatest reasons to get rid of the subminimal wage that sounds about right younger children have a higher poverty rate yeah and then of course the ancillary benefit of hopefully reducing alleviating student lung debt in the future and in the present for kids working in college but also this is for many serious money to pay for college correct and really in a way this is also a matter of equal treatment these workers are young but they are doing the same type of work as their adult counterparts they're protruding the same amount of productivity more or less to their adult peers to the benefit of the south businesses and they really should be a massive I wonder if you could tell us a little about the national employment the organization national employment project who are your principal funders we have several funders in four different events some of them remain I know that this question comes up sometimes whether or not we have funding for being we do it's a small amount I don't recall what it is exactly but I believe it's about 14% during our funding from a larger from a non-union institution such as the four foundation so the 14% is union funding? yeah it's about 14% more or less if you need that information I can try to get that and put that in my next testimony and also be found online if there is a small percentage of our funding okay I appreciate you getting on the phone with us and we'll keep you posted on how we do it and we're going to wait for your tent you're going to send something in writing? yes I went actually putting that together when I was done to be on the phone with you guys so I will send that to you guys by the end of today great thank you very much thank you okay one thing of the various pieces of testimony that we've heard that I think we should recognize in each case is that what the organizations are and who they represent that we're hearing from I give Kato credit for saying that it is a libertarian union and so on as to what it is and we heard from David of course earlier as an economist but the fact is his organization is principally funded and was founded by big labor by large labor organizations the national employment labor project or a law project we just heard from is funded by the American Federation of State County municipal employees the American Federation of Teachers and Communications Workers of America and I can go on and on organizations that appear before this body constantly say that they're non-partisan they may be non-partisan in not supporting Republicans or Democrats or progressives but the policies we need to really understand what we're hearing from and what they mean and what's behind some of the testimony that we listen to 14% all of those unions equate to 14% well that's basically that's basically there's some foundation money and so on but again as we look at both policies and positions and how they describe themselves it's very very clear that this is a labor organization it may be and that's how much it is it doesn't question a full disclosure that's all I'm saying we need to as we evaluate what we hear we need to understand who we're hearing from that's all and we try to do that and we also can't just because where they get their funding and who they are doesn't necessarily mean the quality of their research on either side it's poor I mean we could say that about every witness we haven't seen Chamber of Commerce comes in here we're going to hammer them and just say are you just talking about business if all your facts are wrong but you understand of course the economists and the economists findings I always wanted to be an economist, a philosopher or a philanthropist because none of those requires licensing on the other hand it's interesting that who she's advocating for are not able to be members of unions so well and in some ways the verses her point is well taken that it protects some jobs I mean I don't think it's very apples and oranges but this would conceivably put instead of business to hire younger people they'd have to pay less instead of hiring a full adult who they'd have to pay the full well I like to tell anecdotes about my former lobbying life but I did represent I did represent labor and very early on there was tension in the labor movement we were doing a minimum wage bill and many labor union people said why are we involved in this none of our members get minimum wage and then let them join a union if they want to get the wages up I'm actually I'll be honest I'm thankful that the other side of that argument came through and said well we have to advocate on behalf of working people in general you're used to us so I was going to say I'm not sure I want to come after that discussion you just wanted it to add so that you could testify actually Senator Rock asked me last week and when we talked about it briefly although I think you were more focused on housing trust and their funding thank you and for the record my name is Ehrhardt I'm here representing the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition I think there's extra so folks behind me are interested in copies we do have a little extra hard copy and just to be clear we're not a labor we don't represent labor unions we're a statewide coalition with 80 plus member organizations and we do mostly have organizations as members and they represent a pretty broad swath of mostly non-profits that have an interest in affordable housing for low income for monitors, vulnerable for monitors fixed income they include organizations like the Champlain Housing Trust which I think you heard from last week the other non-profits that own and operate and develop affordable housing homeless shelters you heard from a couple weeks ago on homelessness awareness day and including the community action agencies which do a broad array of anti-poverty work many of the designated mental health agencies are members because their clients obviously need affordable housing as well so I'll just sort of preface my statements by saying I'm not an economist I'm actually not are you a philanthropist? I'm sometimes a philosopher right I'm quite a philosopher many years ago he is a fabulous percussionist and a percussionist yes so and also we have a particular take on this and what I'm here to talk to you about is what it costs to rent housing in Vermont that's really what I want to focus on and as a result of and I've been involved in personally in housing and community development for over 30 years in Vermont now there has never been a time where I have not seen a large gap between what is available on the market and what low income for monitors working at lower wage jobs can afford and the information I just passed out basically it gives you an indicator this is 2018 information it's from our national low income housing coalition it's a national organization they put out this report every year have been doing that for over 20 years it basically measures an affordability gap for rental housing in every jurisdiction in the United States on a county basis in a metropolitan statistical area basis so this is the information from Vermont it was published last I think it was May or June the 2019 report unfortunately will be coming out after you folks have gone home hopefully for the summer and fall and what an indication sorry because there isn't a date so it's 2018 it's 2018 down at lower left hand corner average 2018 again 2019 will come out probably late May or early June and the major kind of data point the major number that is in this upper right hand corner in bold red letters $22.40 an hour that is what our national association what we call the housing wage I've been before you in past years explaining this briefly this is what you need to earn if you are working 20 hours a week 52 weeks a year to afford a modest average two bedroom apartment in the state of Vermont it's not a high end unit it's based on the section 8 fair market rents which are supposed to be approximately the 40th percentile of the market in each of their respective markets that is a statewide average it's going to be lower in the northeast kingdom it's lower in numerous counties it is highest in the metropolitan statistical area which is actually oddly and this is one of those federal management budget includes all Franklin County but the housing wage in that area if you look at the table in the lower left hand corner it breaks out a couple of additional counties and the metro area in that area it's $27.73 an hour airport before you continue just to clarify in order to afford housing average housing cost you need to earn $22.40 an hour did you say we're working 20 hours a week did I say I'm in 40 I thought this was full time it is, it's full time at full time we all have these kind of moments where like weird word substitution it's what you really would like to do when you're working 20 hours a week 60 so thank you for that cash standard Windsor County is $20.65 an hour Washington $20.46 an hour Wyndham 2021 Addison $19.63 an hour and then in the lower right hand corner there's a bar chart that sort of compares the two bedroom FMR or fair market rent that's the HUD section 8 standard that last year it's changed changed as of October 1 was $1,165 a month that does include utilities because we all speak of gross rent which is rent and utilities whether they're paid by the the tenant or by the owner the one bedroom fair market rent last year was $928 a month again including utilities what is the rent affordable to someone at area median income is someone at median income can certainly afford those rents because they can afford $1,921 a month what is the rent affordable to someone with a full-time job at the mean renter wage back up for one second about 29% of our households in the state of Vermont are renters we have one of the highest homeownership rates in the country so 71% are homeowners the remaining 29% are renters and their mean average wage rent affordable at their average wage rather is $668 a month so there's a large gap between that $668 a month and the two bedroom fair market rent of $1,165 close to I don't usually do math in public but it's a little over about $500 and then if you look at our extremely low income for Monters those earning 30% of that is figured in the hopes that housing is only 30% of your pay yes and thank you for that I forgot to explain so we have a pretty well industry accepted standard of affordability here more than 30% of your income for your shelter costs if you're a renter that's rent utilities if you're a homeowner that's mortgage taxes insurance and condo fees if you live in a condominium if you're paying more than 30% of your income for your shelter costs you don't have enough left over for other basic life necessities and you're literally a paycheck or a crisis away from missing the rent potentially subjecting yourself to pension and eventually possibly unfortunately becoming homeless and going into that spiral that downward spiral of homelessness is hugely expensive to bring families back out of at often great expense to the state so our lowest income for Monters at 30% of air median income they can only afford $576 a month for rent utilities a full time minimum wage shop and again this was last year's number so it's before our state minimum wage went up in January but last year's minimum wage a full time Vermont minimum wage worker could afford $546 a month for rent so basically as a minimum wage worker in Vermont need more than two incomes 2.1 full time jobs to afford your average so if you're a single person um sorry if you're a single head of household you basically need to have two full time jobs to afford if you've got a couple kids and you're the only way to earn your family so that's per person you need 2.1 full time jobs per household and if you're a single parent head of household you're the one person that needs to hold those two full time jobs do you have a chart that shows how Vermont's housing across the last few years I don't have that I can get into that is actually you're going to hear from Moira Collins from the housing finance agency I believe tomorrow we have a community in Vermont has an incredible data site it's called housingdata.org and if you go to housingdata.org it's recently been completely revamped and revised by the Vermont housing finance agency under other members of the housing community it has all of that you can slice and dice it by county, by town, by well some of it doesn't go down to that grade at the town level because a lot of it's based on the American Community Survey the week before that the ACS in rural areas is not as reliable as other sources it is done by the census but you have to look at either three year rolling averages or five year rolling averages one of the questions and I'm going to be continually asking throughout this discussion and other discussions that we have is why is affordable housing in Vermont so unaffordable that's a long discussion that is a long discussion there are many many factors that figure into that and we actually talked about that in the past and I know that yeah if we could get into that at another point I really appreciate that because I mean I look at, for example other states, this comparison that you have of states ranked by 2% housing wage and I think about things of relatively rural areas I think of places that are cold or colder than we are so it takes into account the eating cost and there are substantial differences so one of the things and let me just say one other thing because I know we're talking about the minimum wage so we're talking about people who are able to work but at the bottom of this bar chart if you look at folks who are not able to work because they have a disability what they can afford is nothing there is no place literally in the state of Vermont where someone with disability who can only afford $241 a month for their rent the end place of the United States that there's literally no place there's no place in the United States where anyone at the federal or in the states where there's a higher state minimum wage there's no place in the United States where anyone on minimum wage because obviously some states default to the Fed can rent a two bedroom apartment at minimum at minimum wage and then to most people in those kinds of situations and including those situations in Vermont rely to some extent on public assistance they do and there's really two ways to get at this issue one is that people need to be able to earn more and folks who have a disability that prevents them from working or have other factors to prevent them being able to hold up a full time job and folks who can hold full time jobs what this shows you is you can go at it from the other end which is more section 8 vouchers rental assistance because the market really does not serve lower wage workers and that's why we have federal assistance that's why we advocate for state assistance because we can come at it from two ends one is raise wages the other is provide additional public subsidies to help basically help supplement the failures of the market well the third thing though that we haven't talked about and that's the reason that I asked the question I do is why is affordable housing so unaffordable and that one of the ways that you get at poverty is you reduce the costs that low income people have to spend absolutely and there's a number of ways of doing that one is subsidies the other is you have before you a report from the Act 250 commission talks about enhanced designation areas and we support we long supported that general concept of eliminating duplication between the local plan review process and the Act 250 process in areas where there is capacity to do rigorous local review and we're talking about areas that are designated for housing but I will just say New England is a very high cost area some of it has to do with our older housing our older housing is less energy efficient it's older it needs more capital improvements it has lead paint issues that need to be addressed and obviously that energy efficiency and the heating costs we're going to get to that tomorrow just a couple I just got one question I only have a few more minutes the 1285 is really striking where did that number come from as the average renter wage sorry 12 average renter wage first page average renter wage is 1285 an hour so my understanding is that I can dig into it further but all this information comes from the American Community Survey of the Census some of it comes from something called the comprehensive housing affordability strategy or CHAS it's something that HUD I can't remember which other federal agencies put together so there's a number of different data sources in here that are data sources for the entire report and I didn't put you the methodology but I can get you the methodology do you know what the average wage is in the month for the entire population? I do not what I can't tell you is the last time that we looked is that we have a large percentage and I haven't done this in probably a year or two but I looked at Bureau of Labor statistics and there is actually a very large percentage of jobs in Vermont that don't that don't pay the housing this housing wage and on the back I don't have Vermont information on the very back nationally you have and this is probably I would say relatively true for Vermont also you have a number of jobs typical jobs that pay less than the housing wage again last time I looked in Vermont it was well over half of the different types of jobs in Vermont that paid less than the housing wage and so that you either they need to earn more or they need a subsidy of some sort to help them not get into that difficult situation of paying 40, 50 and 60% of their income for their shelter cost and you may have heard this also before but I looked about a year or so back at the percentage of households that have only one wage earner and the last time I looked it was over 60% of Vermont households that have only only one wage earner so again you're back to if they're a low wage earner they're going to need way more than one job possibly as many as two jobs to I'm surprised it's that high surprisingly high number that's very interesting because in our elementary school it's flipped because when Ward entered kindergarten it was about 70% of the parents had one wage earner and now it's 72% our double working families which is interesting so it's completely flipped in the 20 years and that number was a statewide number that I looked at again I didn't look at it for this testimony today about a year or so ago for folks who are looking for granular detail on housing affordability in your county we're missing Franklin County Franklin County and Grand Isle counties are folded into what's known as the Burlington South Burlington MSA they're considered because of the easy commute distance from places like South Hero or St. Albans the job market of Chittin County Central Chittin County part of the metropolitan statistical area doesn't represent Franklin Grand Isle County and this is something that this is a federal designation and we have arguments with this too because it includes Richford and there's no way that Richford is part of the South Burlington market area it's crazy so there's county by county information there and then maybe I'll leave you with what I think is probably to me the most startling number is the second last page, big bar chart this gets back to the mean renter wage and what renters can afford so we actually are the fifth worst fifth least affordable state for renters in the country ahead of us are typical very high rent areas like Hawaii, California, Maryland, New Jersey we're fifth but right behind us, Senator Brock are the rest of the New England states, Massachusetts well we've got Washington, there's a flip but Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire the only one that's not in there is Rhode Island so it's a New England white problem thank you very much we have a couple of you know this is so useful in terms of as we weigh not just minimum wage but livable wage and temp I mean I use this chart so often in the last two years