As business owners and executives, we oppose legislation currently before the General Assembly to eliminate the cost of living adjustment in the Missouri minimum wage. It’s important to maintain the buying power of the minimum wage, which workers put right back into local businesses, purchasing needed goods and services.

Missouri’s minimum wage of $7.25 an hour amounts to just $15,080 for full-time, year-round work. It is too low for healthcare aides, childcare workers, cashiers, restaurant workers, security guards and other minimum wage workers to make ends meet. Today’s minimum wage already has less buying power than it had in the 1950s and 60s. Repealing the cost of living adjustment would hurt Missouri’s lowest paid workers and hurt our economy.

Maintaining the value of the minimum wage through annual adjustments will not increase unemployment. The first federal minimum wage was legislated during the Great Depression to lift wages to alleviate poverty and increase the consumer purchasing power needed for job creation and economic recovery. Minimum wage increases play the same role today. The most rigorous studies of the impact of actual minimum wage increases show they do not cause job losses – whether during periods of economic growth or during recessions.*

Missourians voted overwhelmingly in 2006 to raise the minimum wage and keep it from being eroded by inflation. Missouri cannot afford to go backwards. Preserving the cost of living adjustment makes sense for our businesses, our workforce, our communities and our state.

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* Research, polls and other resources posted at our website.