COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCBD) – The minimum wage in South Carolina is $7.25 and hour, but lawmakers are working to raise it to $10 an hour.

Two bills have already been filed in the State House and another bill includes a three-year period to raise it to $12 an hour.

However, some argue that raising the minimum wage could cause businesses to lose hours or replace employees with technology.

“As labor costs go up, those technologies become relatively less expensive to implement — that is if the relative cost of labor and that technology become fairly comparable to one another — and so we see companies introducing those alternative technologies at a faster rate,” said Joseph Von Nessen, Research Economist with USC’s Darla Moore School of Business.

Congress is looking to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The bill passed by the House is now in the hands of the Senate.