AI Revisits Cengiz et al.: 236 Minimum Wage Hikes Show No Detectable Job Loss

ChenhaoTan · x · 2026-09-29

The Living Science project used AI agents to extend influential economics papers, publishing four updates. Extending Cengiz et al. (2019), an agent identified 236 state-level minimum wage increases through 2024—up from 138 in the original study. Across those 236 increases, affected workers' wages rose 4.6%, while the estimated employment change was −1.1%, statistically indistinguishable from zero: still no detectable job loss in the fifteen-dollar era.

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