Oregon Public Broadcasting

If you earn the minimum wage, you might get some good news Monday.

Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industry is expected to announce whether or not the minimum pay rate – of $8.40 an hour – will get a bump, come January.

We’ll know for certain Monday whether the minimum wage goes up or not, but the raw data that drives Oregon’s minimum wage are already out.

State labor economists look at the Consumer Price Index, from August to August.

The 2010 number was released on Friday. It shows a little more than a one percent rise, mostly because of price increases last fall.

Tim Duy is with the University of Oregon’s Economic Forum. He says the one-percent increase likely means a ten-cent increase in the minimum wage. If that happens, he says some businesses will feel it.

Tim Duy:  “I don’t think the impact is going to be the end of the world for the business community. But I do think that it will increase the stress on certain classes of firms that are still suffering under the weight of the recession.”

While an increase would be good news for people who earn a minimum wage, Duy says it may be bad news for people hoping to land an entry-level job.

Tim Duy: “It could translate into fewer jobs possibly for that category of worker, the minimum wage category of worker.”

Duy says the bigger challenge facing Oregon’s economy, though, may be the fact that the state’s minimum wage is more than a dollar above the federal rate – a gap that may grow in January.

Oregon evaluates its minimum wage on an annual basis. A year ago, the all-important Consumer Price Index had actually gone down. But when that happens, the minimum pay rate stays where it is, it doesn’t go down.