The Atlantic Low wages benefit employers at the expense of both workers and taxpayers. January 14, 2021 Getty / The Atlantic The country’s very low minimum wage comes at a high cost. And for taxpayers, it adds up to more than $100 billion a year. That number comes from a new analysis of safety-net usage by Ken Jacobs, Ian Eve Perry, and Jenifer MacGillvary of UC Berkeley’s Labor Center. It identifies working families with at least one member who would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were lifted to $15 an hour, and finds that the government spends about $107 billion a year on Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), cash welfare, food stamps, and the earned-income tax credit for those families.