Jeannette Wicks-Lim, backtofullemployment.org, January 18, 2013

At the start of 2013, ten states raised their minimum wage rates: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. These ten states did so because each has a law requiring that it maintain the purchasing power of the state wage floor with an annual inflation adjustment, also called a “cost-of-living adjustment (COLA)” or “inflation-indexing.”

This flurry of activity sparked, yet again, a political fight over the merits of this century-old labor standard. One issue that comes up is whether minimum wage hikes will trigger inflation, i.e., cause an overall rise in prices.