Andrews: Minimum Wage Fights and Rurality

Travis S. Andrews (J.D.) recently published, Localizing Minimum Wage Laws: A Rural Perspective, in the Cornell Law Review Online. In this Essay, Andrews asks what proposals for increased minimum wage requirements may mean for rural places and asserts that these rural impacts have been overlooked in wage debates.

Andrews begins by surveying increasing political action and attention to efforts to increase the minimum wage to $15 nationally, as well as reforms in more than 50 localities that have already set their own minimum wage requirements higher than state or national pay floors. Andrews asserts that both legal scholarship and political debates have focused mostly on urban spaces, driven as they are by growing income inequality and the inability of more wage earners to meet even basic needs on current income amounts. Andrews then asks “whether across‑the‑board minimum wage hikes, based on urban areas’ high cost of living and income inequality, are necessary or desirable in nonurban areas.”

Andrews ultimately argues that differences in cost-of-living demands across urban and rural spaces caution against a one‑size‑fits‑all wage requirement, worrying that blanket minimum wage hikes may risk “disproportionately harming growth and employment in nonurban areas.” The Essay then concludes with Andrews’s proposals for “creating more precise minimum wage laws.”