With a recent tweet about the minimum wage, Steven Greenhouse, the labor and economics reporter for the New York Times, edged close to advocacy instead of reporting.
In a July 24 tweet, Greenhouse recommended that every politician should be required to try and live on minimum wage to see what it is like.
I often think every U.S. politician should live for a few weeks on the minimum wage to see what it’s like. $290 a week for a fulltime worker
— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) July 24, 2013
Of course, the minimum wage was never conceived as the sort of pay scale that someone would “live” on in the first place. Not only that, but according to a recent study, only 2.9 percent of American workers are earning the minimum wage.
Additionally, minimum wage workers are not somehow a permanent class of people. For instance, two thirds of these workers earn raises within a year; many graduate from these entry-level, low-wage jobs to other positions before too long.
In response to Greenhouse’s tweet, the Employment Policies Institute tweeted in response, “We often think reporters should be objective about the topics they cover, not wear their policy preferences on their sleeves.”
EPI recently pointed out that the latest proposal for hiking the minimum wage would cost upwards to 988,000 jobs.
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