Oops. Got the wrong end of the stick on that story. It’s the senate not the CBO.
The CBO says that the minimum wage could lift some workers from poverty but may lead to 1 million job losses and estimates that raising the limit to £10.10 from $7.25 would cost 500k jobs by late 2016. They add that a wage rise could bring a small decrease in the budget deficits for several years but a small increase thereafter.
Raising the minimum wage is often a contentious issue. While it’s welcomed by workers the blanket coverage often does the most damage to small businesses. In an environment where business expenditure is still pretty weak in the near term such a move is likely to do more harm than good.