Kentucky lawmakers are considering raising the state’s minimum wage, and new economic research suggests that shouldn’t hurt employment. Critics of increasing low-end pay say it prices some workers out of the job market. David Cooper with the Economic Policy Institute says that used to be the standard thinking among economists, but a lot of recent studies have compared employment in one location that raises the minimum with a neighbor that doesn’t. One study looked at six hundred pairs of counties along state borders. Cooper says to their surprise, economists found very little difference in job numbers. Cooper says they’ve found that with the higher wages, employers are getting lower turnover and higher productivity, more than enough to make up for the cost of the higher pay. He says a lot of minimum-wage employers are in businesses that see higher consumer demand when low-income families have more money.