Economy

Report finds Oklahoma poverty fell far more without wage hike

April 29, 2026

Ray Carter

A new report predicts that Oklahoma’s official poverty rate will be substantially higher with a new $15 minimum wage in 2029 than the state’s poverty rate was in 2019, when a $7.25 minimum wage had been in place for a decade.

That same report predicts the state’s poverty rate will decline by a far smaller degree following an increase to $15 than what was achieved in Oklahoma over a decade when the minimum wage was $7.25 an hour.

Ironically, those findings are part of a report that argues in favor of increasing Oklahoma’s minimum wage every year, starting with $15 an hour in 2029 and perpetually increasing every year thereafter.

The report by Scioto Analysis was released by supporters of State Question 832, which would mandate continual annual increases in Oklahoma’s minimum wage based on increases in the cost of living in the nation’s largest urban centers, as measured by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.

Because Oklahoma is one of the nation’s lowest-cost states, the measure would effectively mandate wage levels far above market rates in Oklahoma, based on the cost of living in places like Chicago or Los Angeles.

As a result, while SQ 832 would initially mandate that entry-level jobs pay $15 an hour by 2029, the wage mandate would rapidly escalate in subsequent years with an annual compounding effect that quickly rachets up the cost of hiring entry-level or low-skill workers.

The Scioto Analysis report, “Poverty and Cost of Living in Oklahoma: Minimum Wage Impacts,” estimates that a $15 minimum wage would reduce Oklahoma’s overall poverty rate by only one percentage point, reducing the rate from 15.3 percent to 14.3 percent.

Yet the report acknowledges that Oklahoma reduced its poverty rate by a much greater amount from 2010 to 2019, when the minimum wage stayed at $7.25 an hour the entire time.

The report showed that Oklahoma’s poverty rate was above 16 percent in 2010 and declined to roughly 11 percent by 2019, before COVID and Biden administration policies fueled massive inflation that outpaced workers’ income growth and drove the poverty rate back up.

The fact that Oklahoma’s poverty rate fell so much when the minimum wage remained unchanged for a decade should not surprise people, according to one local economist, who noted that opportunities increase for entry-level and low-skill workers when the cost of employing them is not exorbitant.

“As the minimum wage fell in real terms, that created more opportunity—not the other way around,” said Byron Schlomach, an economist and researcher.

The Scioto Analysis conceded that Oklahoma is currently “one of the most affordable states in the nation,” having the fourth-lowest regional price parity among all 50 states in 2023, and that one “risk associated with raising the minimum wage is an increase in price levels across various goods and services.”

But the report dismisses that concern, arguing that wage mandates can be increased at a faster pace than the increase in prices for goods and services caused in part by constant increases in the minimum wage.

The Scioto Analysis report also appears to assume that no jobs will be eliminated or automated if the minimum wage in Oklahoma is hiked to $15.

However, other studies have found that significant job losses are likely, meaning the Scioto Analysis prediction of even a single percentage-point reduction in the state’s poverty rate may be overstated.

During an October 2025 legislative study, Peter Hansen, director of research and policy analysis at the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), warned that the impact of an artificially high wage law would reduce Oklahoma’s GDP by roughly $700 million by 2035 compared to what would happen if no change were made to the state’s minimum-wage law.

He also warned that net job losses were likely in Oklahoma by 2031 and 16,000 jobs could be lost by 2035 if the state’s minimum-wage law is increased dramatically.

The real-world impact of a law enacted in California that increased the minimum wage for fast-food employees to $20 an hour in April 2024 also indicates that SQ 832 would have a significant negative impact.

In November 2024, the Employment Policies Institute found that the California wage law had reduced fast-food job opportunities and hit customers’ pocketbooks. Menu prices surged as much as 10.1 percent from the law’s 2023 passage to April 2024.

A February 2025 paper from the Berkeley Research Group found that menu prices at California’s fast-food restaurants increased by 14.5 percent between September 2023 (the month the wage legislation was signed into law) and October 2024, which was nearly double the national average during that time.

At the October 2025 study conducted by members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, James Leewright, president and CEO of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association, said that adjusted for cost-of-living differences a $20-an-hour wage in California is comparable to a $14-per-hour wage in Oklahoma, meaning the impact of SQ 832 could be even more severe than the impact of California’s law.

Schlomach said SQ 832 would likely drive up the costs of many goods and services in Oklahoma as the impact of the wage hike is passed along to customers, robbing the state of its longstanding competitive advantage as a place with a low cost of living.

He said the arguments for SQ 832 are grounded mostly in letting proponents portray themselves as virtuous, rather than being based on producing real-world benefits for individuals who are currently gaining the work experience required to move up the economic ladder and earn higher wages.

“Symbolism over substance. That’s what the minimum wage is: Symbolism over substance,” Schlomach said. “I want to do this big symbol that supposedly represents my big commitment to equality, even though the substance of it is to bring about exactly the opposite.”