Quiero saber acerca de...

38874

Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 138 / Thursday, July 22, 2021 / Proposed Rules
increase in pay paralleling an increase in access to paid time off. Pfeifers 2010 study of German companies provides similar results, indicating a reduction in absenteeism if workers experience an overall increase in pay.97
Conversely, Dionne and Dostie 2007
attribute a decrease in absenteeism to mechanisms of the firm other than an increase in worker pay, specifically scheduling that provides both the option to work-at-home and for fewer compressed work weeks.98 The Department believes both the connection between minimum wages and absenteeism, and the connection between absenteeism and productivity are well enough established that this is a feasible benefit of the proposed rule.
e. Reduced Poverty and Income Inequality
lotter on DSK11XQN23PROD with PROPOSALS2

Raises in the minimum wage have been shown to reduce the level of poverty among the entire population, and specifically among children, within high impact areas.99 Himmelstein and Venkataramani 2019 estimate that nearly 5 percent of people living in poverty are healthcare workers, and that a $15 per hour minimum wage increase would lead to 215,476 workers and 163,472 children lifted above the poverty line.100 Reducing poverty will benefit historically marginalized communities, as they have the highest poverty rates. The CBO estimates that a $15 per hour minimum wage would alleviate poverty for 1.3 million Americans.101 Although a reduction in poverty would be smaller for Federal contract workers to the extent that they are already earning at least $10.95 in 2021, the Department nonetheless believes that this proposed rule could alleviate poverty for some Federal contract workers. If a Federal contract worker works full time 40 hours per week for 52 weeks a year at $10.95, their annual salary would be $22,776, which is below the 2020 Census Poverty Threshold for a family of four or more.102
97 Pfeifer, C. 2010. Impact of Wages and Job Levels on Worker Absenteeism. International Journal of Manpower 311, 5972. https doi.org/
10.1108/01437721011031694.
98 Dionne, G., & Dostie, B. 2007. New Evidence on the Determinants of Absenteeism Using Linked Employer-Employee Data. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 611, 108120. https
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/
001979390706100106.
99 Godoey, A., & Reich, M. 2021. Are Minimum Wage Effects Greater in Low-Wage Areas? Industrial Relations A Journal of Economy and Society, 601, 3683. https doi.org/10.1111/irel.12267.
100 Himmelstein, K. E. W., & Venkataramani, A.
S. 2019. Economic Vulnerability Among US

VerDate Sep<11>2014

17:35 Jul 21, 2021

Jkt 253001

Not only does a wage increase elevate earnings for the lowest earners working for Federal contractors, studies show that minimum wage increases can also reduce the income differential between the lowest earners and the highest earners, as well as between the lowest earners and the middle wage workers Mishel 2014.103 Income inequality is reduced with respect to all low-wage earners, but reduced income inequality across gender and race are additionally valuable considerations. Oka and Yamada 2019 found that increases in the minimum wage increased real wages for women, less educated, and younger workers.104 Increasing the minimum wage has the potential to drastically aid those living in poverty, and as a disproportionate number of people of color are those currently impoverished Creamer 2020,105 increasing the minimum wage will aid in reducing racial income inequality.
Reducing poverty for Federal contract workers could lead to increased productivity and efficiency, because it could increase worker morale and decrease absenteeism, as discussed above.
5. Impacts by Industry This section analyzes the costs and transfers by industry relative to government contracting expenditures, revenues, and payroll. This analysis excludes territories because revenue and payroll data are not available for territories. The Department used Year 1
impacts rather than average annualized impacts to demonstrate the size of the impacts in the year where costs are largest. The Department considers total employer costs direct costs and transfers here because those are the relevant costs to businesses. The Department also limited the analysis to firms actively holding government contracts e.g., firms in USASpending in 2019 rather than all firms in SAM to better approximate costs for firms with potentially affected employees.
Including all firms would underestimate costs among truly affected firms.
Female Health Care Workers: Potential Impact of a $15-per-Hour Minimum Wage. American Journal of Public Health 1092, 198205. doi:10.2105/
AJPH.2018.304801.
101 CBO. 2019, July. The Effects on Employment and Family Income of Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage Publication No. 55410. https
www.cbo.gov/publication/55410.
102 U.S. Census Bureau. Poverty Thresholds.
https www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/
demo/income-poverty/historical-povertythresholds.html.
103 Mishel, L. 2014. The Tight Link Between the Minimum Wage and Wage Inequality. Economic Policy Institute. https www.epi.org/blog/tight-linkminimum-wage-wage-inequality/.

PO 00000

Frm 00060

Fmt 4701

Sfmt 4702

Across all industries, total employer costs are less than 0.4 percent of government contracting revenues Table 10. Contracting revenue represents the revenue obtained by these firms specifically for work performed on Federal contracts. This measure may be most appropriate when considering cost pass-throughs to the Federal Government in the form of higher contract prices. Since many covered contractors garner revenue from nonFederal contracts, the transfer payment estimate is almost certainly a lower percentage of their total revenues. See section IV.B.3. for details on how Federal contracting expenditures are calculated. This analysis only includes employer costs associated with firms holding active SCA or DBA contracts 121,200. It excludes firms holding nonprocurement contracts because the Department believes these firms are not included in the USASpending data on Federal contracting revenues i.e., the denominator. Using this methodology, the industry where costs and transfers are estimated to be the largest share of contracting revenue is the accommodation and food services industry, where employer costs are 3.5
percent of Federal contracting revenues.
The Department also compared employer costs to estimated revenues and payrolls using the 2017 Statistics of U.S. Businesses SUSB. Total revenues and payroll from SUSB were adjusted to reflect the share of businesses impacted by this rulemaking and estimated to have affected employees 166,700.106
Total employer costs were then compared to these revenues and payrolls. This analysis includes both Federal contractors and firms holding nonprocurement contracts. Using this methodology, employer costs are less than 0.2 percent of revenues and less than 0.6 percent of payroll on average.
The industry where costs and transfers are estimated to be the largest share of revenue is accommodation and food services 1.2 percent and of payroll is retail trade 4.3percent.
BILLING CODE 451027C
104 Oka, T., & Yamada, K. 2019, July.
Heterogeneous Impact of the Minimum Wage:
Implications for Changes in Betweenand Withingroup Inequality. arXiv. https arxiv.org/pdf/
1903.03925.pdf.
105 Creamer, J. 2020. Poverty Rates for Blacks and Hispanics Reached Historic Lows in 2019. U.S.
Census Bureau. https www.census.gov/library/
stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-andhispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html.
106 This includes 121,200 contractors from USASpending and 45,500 contractors operating on Federal properties or lands.

E:FRFM22JYP2.SGM

22JYP2