[jordanb]

Yep, and notice that the article was talking about a reduction in aggregate poverty rather than total employment. If a few people lose their jobs but a significantly larger number of people get higher wages, poverty in aggregate goes down.

But as the article points points out, there is excellent and robust empirical evidence that the current minimum wage (and even earlier minimum wages in America, which were much higher) are too low to significantly affect total employment. Wikipedia has an excellent writeup of the scholarship on this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Empirical_studies