The federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 an hour under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) since July 2009, making it the longest freeze in the statute's history. Now a legislative push to triple that floor to $25 an hour is generating the most detailed job-loss projections the debate has produced. A new analysis from the Employment Policies Institute (EmPI), an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit focused on entry-level employment, puts the projected cost of that proposal at 5.01 million jobs nationally, with restaurant and bar workers, grocery staff, and workers aged 16 to 24 absorbing the largest shares.

This analysis matters for two distinct audiences: workers in hospitality and retail deciding where to plant their careers over the next five years, and HR and compensation leaders modelling wage-floor exposure before the next budget cycle. Both perspectives get separate treatment below.

What the proposal actually says

Representative Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) introduced HR 8555, the Living Wage for All Act, in April 2026. Under the House version, employers with 500 or more employees would need to reach $25 an hour by January 1, 2031; smaller firms would have until 2038. The Senate companion bill, titled the Skilled Workforce for America Act and led by Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), carries a slightly different phase-in: large corporate employers would hit $25 by 2032, with other businesses following by 2039. Senator Murphy announced the Senate version in June 2026.

Beyond the initial $25 target, the bill mandates automatic future increases pegged to two-thirds of the national median wage. The $25 figure traces back to a resolution adopted at the Democratic Socialists of America's 2021 national convention, which called for tying future increases to worker productivity.

For context: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks the median hourly wage across US industries, and two-thirds of the current national median would be roughly in the $17-$18 range depending on the year measured. A floor pegged to that formula and rising over time represents a structural shift in how the federal wage floor would interact with regional labor markets, not a one-time adjustment.

Where the projected job losses land

The EmPI model builds on methodology developed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and incorporates the latest Census Bureau data. At the sector level, restaurants and bars face the steepest projected loss: more than 1.7 million jobs, the largest hit of any single industry. Supermarkets and grocery stores follow at 204,495 positions, then elementary and secondary schools (159,189), construction (156,764), and general recreation (146,056).

The state-level geography skews heavily toward the South and lower-wage Sun Belt markets. Texas faces the largest single-state loss, at nearly 832,000 jobs. Pennsylvania would shed more than 295,000; Georgia 253,708; North Carolina 250,000; and Florida 234,730. Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, California, and South Carolina round out the top ten states, losing 213,802, 182,152, 159,873, 142,582, and 135,739 positions respectively. Across twelve Southern states combined, EmPI projects more than 2.5 million total losses, roughly half the national count.

The demographic breakdown is specific. Workers aged 16 to 24 would absorb 2.65 million of the projected losses, making young workers the single most exposed cohort. Women face a projected 3 million job losses against approximately 2.02 million for men. Non-tipped workers account for 3.79 million of the total; tipped workers 1.22 million.

What the underlying research says about wage floors

A separate National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, released in August 2026 and titled Do Minimum Wages Help Workers in Poor and Low Income Families?, adds substantive weight to the job-loss projections. The paper was authored by David Neumark, distinguished professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, and his co-author Emma Wohl, a UC Irvine economics Ph.D. Their dataset draws on Survey of Income and Program Participation records from October 2003 to December 2016.

We do find adverse effects of minimum wages on the employment, hours, and earnings of poor and low-income workers. Most importantly, none of our evidence points to beneficial effects of higher minimum wages for low-wage or low-skill workers in the lowest-income families.

Neumark added, in commentary on the paper, that the harder political reality is that policies genuinely capable of lifting low-wage workers require direct government spending, whereas a minimum wage mandate is an unfunded obligation pushed onto employers.

One detail from the Neumark-Wohl data deserves attention: employed workers in the three lowest poverty brackets averaged just 24.1, 28.1, and 31.7 hours per week. A per-hour wage increase, however large, compounds across a very thin base of hours for the workers most likely to be affected. Any net earnings benefit is therefore smaller than the headline hourly figure implies.

A May 2026 survey of economists conducted by CORCOM, Inc. adds professional context. Of the economists surveyed, 74% opposed raising the federal minimum to $15, 90% opposed a $20 floor, and 96% opposed any figure above $20. A $25 proposal enters that professional environment as the furthest-right tail of a distribution where even $15 commands only a quarter of surveyed economists in support.

For employees

If your current or target role is in food service, grocery, or another entry-level service sector, the practical question is less about whether the Living Wage for All Act passes on schedule and more about what your wage trajectory and job security look like in a market where these debates are actively reshaping how employers design labor costs.

Three specific moves are worth making now:

• Ground your salary expectations in verified market data, not legislative headlines. A $25 federal floor is a proposal, not a benchmark. Look at what people in your role and city actually earn today, using salary data gathered from real workers, and bring that into any pay negotiation. The gap between a legislative target and actual market wages can be wide, especially in lower-cost-of-living states.
• Read the sector signals in your industry. The restaurant, bar, and grocery figures from the EmPI analysis suggest employers in those sectors are already running scenarios where labor costs jump significantly. Some are accelerating automation investments; others are consolidating shift structures. Before passing on a cross-training opportunity or a role in an adjacent sector such as logistics or healthcare support, ask what your employer's workforce plan looks like over the next five years.
• If you are aged 16 to 24, treat your first two roles as a skills-acquisition phase. The concentration of projected losses in your cohort does not mean entry-level work disappears. It means the competition for positions that do remain, and for advancement out of entry-level tiers, intensifies. Building transferable skills during this window is a higher-return move than waiting for a wage floor to do the work.

For HR

Whether or not the Living Wage for All Act advances through Congress, the EmPI projections provide a useful stress-test framework for workforce planning. The modelling forces a specific look at wage-elasticity assumptions that many organizations have left implicit. Three planning moves are worth running this quarter:

1. Map your entry-wage exposure by role and location. If a significant share of your workforce sits within striking distance of a $25 federal floor, and if you operate in Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, or Florida, you are in the geographic concentration zone of the EmPI projections. State-level action is already moving independently: California, New York, and several major cities have enacted wage ordinances above the federal FLSA floor that apply to employers regardless of federal progress. Your scenario models should cover the federal trajectory and the current state-level picture simultaneously, particularly if you operate across multiple jurisdictions where the gap between federal and state minimums is already substantial.

2. Model the sectoral displacement effect on your hiring pipeline. If the restaurant, bar, and grocery sectors shed close to two million jobs in a compressed phase-in window, the displaced workforce will enter adjacent labor markets. For organizations in logistics, warehousing, elder care, and lower-tier professional services, that is a potential candidate pool, but only if your recruitment process is designed to evaluate candidates from non-traditional service backgrounds. Reviewing your job-posting language and structured interview criteria for transferability from hospitality and retail backgrounds is a low-cost move with measurable pipeline impact.

3. Track hours-per-worker as a retention metric, not just headcount. The Neumark-Wohl NBER finding is that higher minimum wages correlate with declines in the probability that low-wage workers remain employed. If your organization absorbs a wage-floor increase through hours reductions rather than outright layoffs, expect voluntary attrition to rise as workers self-select out of thinner schedules. Organizations that monitor hours-per-worker at the team level, not just total headcount, will see retention risk earlier. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has documented the correlation between schedule predictability and retention in hourly workforces; that data is worth pulling alongside your wage-cost modelling.

The political shape of the debate

The House version of the Living Wage for All Act currently carries 31 Democratic co-sponsors. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is not among them, a notable absence given her profile on wage policy. The three co-sponsors with the most extensive Democratic Socialists of America ties are Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), and Summer Lee (D-Pa.). In the Senate, the Skilled Workforce for America Act is co-sponsored by Senators Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden, and Andy Kim, alongside lead sponsor Murphy.

Senator Bernie Sanders has framed his own target in slightly different terms, advocating for a living wage of at least $20 an hour and potentially higher, stopping short of endorsing $25 specifically. That distinction matters for reading the Democratic caucus math: the $25 figure has an ideological home in DSA-aligned organizing, while the broader progressive caucus has anchored closer to $20.

The 2026 midterm cycle is keeping the debate active regardless of the bill's legislative trajectory. Democratic Senate candidates in Texas (James Talarico), Maine (Troy Jackson), and Iowa (Josh Turek) are campaigning on federal minimum wage increases, which means the $25 figure will continue to be pressure-tested through November even without committee movement on the House or Senate bills.

Key takeaways

• The Employment Policies Institute projects 5.01 million job losses under a $25 federal minimum wage, modelled using CBO-derived methods and Census Bureau data. Restaurants and bars (more than 1.7 million) and grocery (204,495) face the heaviest sectoral impact.
• Twelve Southern states would collectively account for more than 2.5 million projected losses; Texas alone for nearly 832,000.
• Workers aged 16 to 24 absorb 2.65 million of the losses; women face approximately 3 million versus 2.02 million for men; non-tipped workers account for 3.79 million of the total.
• An August 2026 NBER working paper by David Neumark (UC Irvine) and Emma Wohl finds no beneficial employment or earnings effect for workers in the lowest-income families from higher minimum wages.
• The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 under the Fair Labor Standards Act, unchanged since July 2009. The proposed $25 floor represents a 245% increase phased in over five to thirteen years depending on employer size and which bill version applies.
• For employees: anchor pay expectations in real market data, monitor sector automation signals, and use entry-level roles as a skills-acquisition phase rather than a permanent income tier.
• For HR: map entry-wage exposure by state, build a hospitality-to-adjacent candidate pipeline now, and track hours-per-worker alongside headcount as a retention indicator.