← Research POLICY REPORT · 2025

How to end low-wage work forever: An 80-80 wage subsidy proposal

Ben Glasner, Adam Ozimek

Economic Innovation Group

Summary

Roughly 21 million U.S. workers earn less than $16 an hour, concentrated among prime-age men and in specific regions. The 80-80 proposal has the government subsidize 80 percent of the gap between a worker’s employer-paid wage and 80 percent of the national median wage, so the subsidy appears directly in every paycheck. Because employers bear none of the cost, the design raises take-home pay without weakening incentives to hire or promote low-wage workers.

A plain-language summary written for this site, not the authors' published abstract. See the published version for the original.

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Cite this

Ben Glasner and Adam Ozimek. 2025. “How to end low-wage work forever: An 80-80 wage subsidy proposal.” Economic Innovation Group. https://eig.org/how-to-end-low-wage-work-forever/.

BibTeX

@techreport{ozimek_glasner_2025_wage_subsidy,
  title = {How to end low-wage work forever: An 80-80 wage subsidy proposal},
  author = {Glasner, Ben and Ozimek, Adam},
  institution = {Economic Innovation Group},
  year = {2025},
  month = sep,
}