Cornell researchers present Tompkins County minimum-wage study; living wage flagged at $25.08

David Bayman, a professor at Cornell’s Brooks School of Public Policy, and researcher Ian Greer presented an abridged summary of a county-commissioned minimum-wage study to the Tompkins County Legislature on Sept. 15, describing a months-long process of public convenings, focus groups and interviews.

Bayman told the legislature the outreach included convenings, focus groups and written input, and that the study team had aimed for broad participation. "There is broad agreement that the cost of living in Tompkins County is very very high," Bayman said. Ian Greer summarized the core numeric findings, noting the team uses $25.08 as the county’s annual living-wage threshold and reported thousands of workers earn wages clustered in the $16–$19 hourly range.

Greer said the industries most affected by low wages include accommodation, food service, retail and agriculture but that the largest counts of low-wage workers are in education services because universities and school districts employ many low-earners. "We use $25.08 as a threshold because that is our living wage number that we calculate every year," Greer said.

The presentation listed three main categories of community benefits from a higher minimum wage—higher livability, more time for workers to manage crises, and improvements to overall community spending and equity—and three categories of costs, including potential price increases, adjustments in hiring or work intensity, and impacts on grant-funded care work or youth employment. On benefits-cliff concerns, Greer summarized his team’s simulation work and said the share of households that would lose net income because of program eligibility changes is small—"it ranges from about 2 to 4% of households" in the scenarios modeled.

Legislators kept the next steps procedural: several said the report provides a roadmap of policy questions to address in committee work, and County Attorney Maury Josephson briefed members separately on ongoing litigation in the 2nd Circuit that could affect local wage authority. No vote on policy was taken; legislators said further committee study and a legal review would be appropriate before any action.