Minimum Wage Laws: Even Bad for the Workers Who Don’t Lose their Jobs

Politicians impose higher tax costs on tobacco because they want less smoking. And environmentalists want higher gas prices so there will be less driving.

And, as explained in this video, higher minimum wages for low-skilled labor will reduce employment.

For economists, none of this is surprising and none of this is newsworthy.

Minimum wage laws are a form of price controls, and we have centuries of evidence that bad things happen when politicians try to rig the market.

When I discuss this issue, people often respond by asserting that businesses will treat people like dirt in the absence of government intervention.

I answer them by agreeing with their premise (businesses would like to pay everyone as little as possible), but I then share this data, which shows that they’re wrong on facts. To be more specific, nearly 99 percent of workers make more than the minimum wage.

In other words, the free market leads to higher wages (which is why today’s workers earn so much more than previous generations).

And we’ll continue to enjoy economic progress, so long as politicians give the private sector enough breathing room to create more prosperity.

Which is why a mandate for higher minimum wages would be a bad idea.

Indeed, research published by the Harvard Business Review shows that the minimum wage even can be bad news for the workers who don’t lose their jobs.

Here is a description of the methodology used by the authors (Qiuping Yu, Shawn Mankad, and Masha Shunko).

…minimum wage policies…can influence firms’ behavior in a variety of complex, interrelated ways. In addition to changing employment rates, studies suggest that firms may strategically respond to minimum wage increases by changing their approaches in other areas, such as worker schedules. This can have significant implications for employee welfare… To address these challenges, we conducted a study in which we…looked at worker schedule and wage data from 2015 to 2018 for more than 5,000 employees at 45 stores in California — where the minimum wage was $9 in 2015, and has increased every year since then — and at 17 stores in Texas, where the minimum wage was $7.25 for the duration of our study. We then controlled for statewide economic and employment differences between California and Texas in order to isolate just the impact of increasing the minimum wage.

Here are some of their results.

For every $1 increase in the minimum wage, we found that the total number of workers scheduled to work each week increased by 27.7%, while the average number of hours each worker worked per week decrease by 20.8%. …which meant that the total wage compensation of an average minimum wage worker in a California store actually fell by 13.6%. This decrease in the average number of hours worked not only reduced total wages, but also impacted eligibility for benefits. We found that for every $1 increase in minimum wage, the percentage of workers working more than 20 hours per week (making them eligible for retirement benefits) decreased by 23.0%, while the percentage of workers with more than 30 hours per week (making them eligible for health care benefits) decreased by 14.9%. …our data suggests that the combination of reduced hours, eligibility for benefits, and schedule consistency that resulted from a $1 increase in the minimum wage added up to average net losses of at least $1,590 per year per employee — equivalent to 11.6% of workers’ total wage compensation.

Gee, is anybody surprised to see bad results from California?

But let’s focus on the minimum wage, not on the (formerly) Golden State.

Here’s the bottom line: I’ve explained that a higher minimum wage is theoretically bad.

And I’ve shown that it leads to higher unemployment.

But this new research is important because it shows that a higher minimum wage also backfires on the workers who don’t lose their jobs.

That’s an argument I’ve made before, but it needs to become a bigger part of the discussion.

The goal should be to help people climb the ladder of economic opportunity, which is why the minimum wage should be abolished rather than increased.

P.S. It’s disgusting that labor bosses push for a higher minimum wage to hurt low-skilled workers who compete with union members and it’s disgusting that big companies like Amazon push for a higher minimum wage to hurt small businesses that compete with them for customers

Read Full Post »

The Crazy French Double Down on Obamanomics

Being a libertarian, I’m used to disappointment. So when something actually goes according to plan, I get very happy.

On that basis, I should be utterly and deliriously overjoyed about my endorsement of Francois Hollande to be President of France.  I wanted him to win, in part because he would engage in statist experiments that would help discredit bad policy.

Well, all my dreams are being fulfilled. Here’s some of a new report in the Wall Street Journal.

French Socialist President François Hollande is set to increase the minimum wage by more than inflation, betting consumers will help revive the country’s stalling economy, while his government levies more taxes on the wealthy and large corporations in a bid to reduce the budget deficit. …The government also is preparing to unveil tax increases to make good on its pledge to reduce the budget deficit to 4.5% of yearly output this year and 3% in 2013. The list includes a new tax on dividends, a new top income-tax bracket of 75% for people earning more than €1 million a year, and increases in the wealth and inheritance taxes.

It’s not terribly surprising that Hollande’s going the fully Monty with higher taxes. Indeed, I’ve already mocked those plans.

But I’m surprised that he’s pushing a higher minimum wage as well, particularly with unemployment already at high levels. This video explains why minimum wages undermine job creation and hurt the less fortunate, but Hollande apparently thinks his plan will stimulate growth.

Other European nations have become more rational and now understand that labor markets need to be more flexible.

The Smic increase and the fiscal plan are in line with Mr. Hollande’s election promises but position France at odds with most other euro-zone nations, which are seeking to keep a lid on labor costs to improve their competitiveness and rein in their budget deficits through spending cuts rather than tax increases.

The comment about “spending cuts” is nonsensical, however. Even though traditionally left-leaning organizations such as the World Bank have concluded that government is far too big in Europe, most governments have imposed huge tax increases. Only the Baltic nations have focused on spending cuts.

As such, we can expect more news like this in France.

In France, economic growth has evaporated, with national statistical office Insee forecasting a further rise in the jobless rate, from 10%. Flag carrier Air France last week said it needs to shed more than 5,000 jobs, around 10% of its workforce, by the end of next year.

The nation’s dwindling productive class, meanwhile, will get even smaller since we’re already seeing evidence that investors and entrepreneurs are going to escape to other nations with less punitive tax regimes.

I joked last month that Obama would never be able to make America as socialist as France, and Hollande is confirming that tongue-in-cheek prediction with his crazy policies.

But I should state that I don’t actually want the French people to suffer. But if they elect bad people who impose bad policy, then I want to make lemonade out of lemons and at least help the rest of the world learn from their mistakes.

As my friend (and soon-to-be American citizen) Veronique de Rugy explained in a video, we don’t want America to become more like France.

Read Full Post »

Policies that Disproportionately Hurt Blacks Are Bad, even if They Are Unintentionally Racist

Professor Walter Williams comments on new research showing how the minimum wage is hurting African-American employment.

Last week, two labor economists, Professors William Even (Miami University of Ohio) and David Macpherson (Trinity University), released a study for the Washington, D.C.-based Employment Policies Institute titled “Unequal Harm: Racial Disparities in the Employment Consequences of Minimum Wage Increases.” During the peak of what has been dubbed the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for young adults (16 to 24 years of age) as a whole rose to above 27 percent. The unemployment rate for black young adults was almost 50 percent, but for young black males, it was 55 percent. Even and Macpherson say that it would be easy to say this tragedy is an unfortunate byproduct of the recession, but if you said so, you’d be wrong. Their study demonstrates that increases in the minimum wage at both the state and federal level are partially to blame for the crisis in employment for minority young adults. …Among the white males, the authors find that “each 10 percent increase in a state or federal minimum wage has decreased employment by 2.5 percent; for Hispanic males, the figure is 1.2 percent. “But among black males in this group, each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage decreased employment by 6.5 percent.” The authors go on to say, “The effect is similar for hours worked: each 10 percent increase reduces hours worked by 3 percent among white males, 1.7 percent for Hispanic males, and 6.6 percent for black males.”

I don’t think that supporters of the minimum wage are racist, but there’s no doubt that they support a policy that has a disproportionately negative impact on blacks. Indeed, the same is true for the school choice issue. African-Americans are especially victimized by crummy government-run schools. Yet the same leftists who generally support higher minimum wages that lead to black unemployment are almost always against school choice, thus condemning minorities to worse life outcomes.

At some point, they should be held morally accountable for the impact of their policies. On both minimum wage laws and school choice, they’re on the wrong side because of the power of union bosses (and all the campaign cash the unions disburse). They’re not motivated by racism, but the result is racist policies.

For more information about the minimum wage, here’s some of what Orphe Divougny had to say in his Center for Freedom and Prosperity video from last year.

Read Full Post »

Bush, Pelosi, and Reid Deserve Scorn for Destroying Jobs for Teenagers

Anybody with an IQ above room temperature understands that companies only hire workers when they expect to generate net revenue (i.e., the total receipts associated with a new worker are expected to be higher than the total costs). That’s why it was so reprehensible for Congress to approve a 40-percent hike in the minimum wage – a step that was guaranteed to kill jobs. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page reports on new research showing 100,000-plus jobs were wiped out. This awful legislation was approved in 2007, and all politicians associated with that choice should be ashamed of themselves.

Economic slowdowns are tough on many job-seekers, but they’re especially hard on the young and inexperienced, whose job prospects have suffered tremendously from Washington’s ill-advised attempts to put a floor under wages. In a new paper published by the Employment Policies Institute, labor economists William Even of Miami University in Ohio and David Macpherson of Trinity University in Texas find a significant drop in teen employment as a direct result of the minimum wage hikes. The wage hikes were implemented in three stages between 2007 and 2009, and not all states were affected because some already mandated a minimum wage above the federal requirement. But for the 19 states affected by all three stages of the federal wage increase, “there was a 6.9% decline in employment for teens aged 16 to 19,” write the authors. And for those who had not completed high school, “we estimated that the hikes reduced employment by 12.4%,” which translates to about 98,000 fewer teens in the work force. After isolating for other economic factors and broadening their analysis to include all 32 states affected by any stage of the federal wage increase, the authors conclude that “the federal minimum-wage hikes reduced teen employment by 2.5% translating to approximately 114,400 fewer employed teens.”

Read Full Post »

Video Explains Why Government-Imposed Minimum Wages Are Wrong

A former intern of mine does a very good job of showing how minimum wage laws cause joblessness in this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

Read Full Post »

Real Story on Minimum Wage Is that Union Bosses Are Intentionally Harming Teenagers

The Wall Street Journal rightfully complains about government-imposed minimum wage laws, which are causing higher levels of teenage unemployment. But an underappreciated aspect of this story is the role of union bosses. The unions are big advocates of higher minimum wages, ostensibly because they want to help the working poor, but the real reason is that unions want to somehow acheive above-market wages for their members, and it is difficult to achieve that goal if employers have other options. But if unions can increase the cost of hiriing other workers – or if they can price them out of the market with minimum-wage laws, then that helps the union bosses negotiate favorable deals. Regardless, the real victims are the hundreds of thousands of teenagers who are now jobless, as the WSJ explains:

Yesterday’s September labor market report was lousy by any measure, with 263,000 lost jobs and the jobless rate climbing to 9.8%. But for one group of Americans it was especially awful: the least skilled, especially young workers. Washington will deny the reality, and the media won’t make the connection, but one reason for these job losses is the rising minimum wage. Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers. The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July. The biggest explanation is of course the bad economy. But it’s precisely when the economy is down and businesses are slashing costs that raising the minimum wage is so destructive to job creation. …The current Congress has spent billions of dollars—including $1.5 billion in the stimulus bill—on summer youth employment programs and job training. Yet the jobless numbers suggest that the minimum wage destroyed far more jobs than the government programs helped to create. Congress and the Obama Administration simply ignore the economic consensus that has long linked higher minimum wages with higher unemployment. Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found “overwhelming” evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased. …State lawmakers are also at fault. At least 10 states have raised their minimum wages above the federal level in the last decade, largely in response to union lobbying and in the name of helping the working poor. Four states with among the highest wage rates are California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York. Studies have shown in each case that their wage policies killed jobs for teens. The Massachusetts teen employment rate sank by one-third when the minimum wage rose by 88% between 1995 and 2008.

Read Full Post »