BLOOMINGTON -- A long-term study on the living-wage concept in Los Angeles may offer a few insights into how it would affect Bloomington if the City Council approves an ordinance that would set such a minimum pay for city workers.

The study, released today through the University of California and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, surveyed 320 of the 10,000 workers affected by the city of Los Angeles' living-wage ordinance passed in 1997.

Local living wage advocate Don Carlson, from the Central Illinois Organizing Project, said the study shows the living wage works regardless of the community's size.

"Living wage works on a social-building level, an economic-building level, and it works to bring the community together," Carlson said.

A living wage is defined as the hourly rate a single person would have to earn in a 40-hour-a-week job to be able to afford a single-bedroom apartment in the community.

For Bloomington that rate is $8.58. The 2004-05 living wage for Los Angeles is $10.03 an hour.

The City Council defeated the ordinance 5-4 in a November vote. Then-Mayor Judy Markowitz cast the tie-breaking vote.

However, Mayor Steve Stockton said he generally supports the proposed ordinance and is willing to work with the organizing project to address his concerns.

Advocates of the concept in Bloomington want an ordinance that would apply to people who work for the city or city contractors. It would not affect private businesses doing business within city limits.

During a telephone news conference Wednesday in Los Angeles announcing the study, David Fairris said the results were surprising in that they showed the majority of workers helped by the living wage are low-income workers in the community. Only 4 percent of the workers were teenagers working summer or after school jobs, Fairris said.

"These wage increases went to genuinely poor and low-income workers," said Fairris, a professor of economics at the University of California at Riverside and one of four authors of the study.

Another conclusion from the study is the living wage raised Los Angeles unemployment rate by about 1 percent. Fairris said employers mostly absorbed increased labor costs, found areas within the business operation to make up the extra cost or raised the cost of the contracts with the city of Los Angeles.

The study did not address the number of businesses that stopped doing business with the city of Los Angeles because of the higher wage rate.

In Bloomington, the proposed ordinance would cover employees at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum, such as ushers and ticket takers, and contract employees for the city, including crossing guards and janitors.