The nation’s biggest retailer said Wednesday it was considering supporting a federal minimum wage hike as advocated by the Obama administration.
A Wal-Mart spokesman told Bloomberg it was “looking” at the increase, which would boost the income of millions of people that shop at the company’s stores.
“That’s something we’re looking at. Whenever there’s debates, it’s not like we look once and make a decision. We look a few times from other angles,” David Tovar said in a phone interview.
President Obama’s proposal to lift the minimum wage to from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour ran into some resistance this week after a CBO report claimed it could cost 500,000 jobs while increasing the earnings of 16.5 million low-wage workers.
The White House disputed the report’s analysis of minimum wage hikes on employment, however.
Update: The same Wal-Mart spokesman told the Huffington Post Wednesday afternoon that his initial comment was taken out of context: “We are not at all considering this.”
