Do ‘All the Economics Show’ That a Minimum Wage Increase Will Help the Economy?

In a recently released clip from his pre-Super Bowl CBS interview, President Joe Biden acknowledged that a $15 minimum wage wouldn’t be included in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, but he announced his willingness to gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour in a separate effort, claiming that “all the economics show that if you do that the whole economy rises.”

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25, and while there is widespread support for raising the minimum wage among left-leaning economists and think tanks, such support isn’t as universal as Biden suggests. In 2019, for example, the conservative think tank the Economic Policies Institute published a survey of economists on their support for a $15 minimum wage. EPI performed similar surveys in the past and found similar results—including in 2015, when the survey was performed by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.