Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
1.4M people are not probably going to be out of work because of a minimum wage raise.
Why do I say that? Because minimum wages have been raised multiple times in multiple places, and there is no real evidence that this has ever happened.
The prime case study currently in the US is Seattle, which passed 15$ per hour minimum wage law back in 2014.
There are plenty of economists claiming that this has backfired significantly and ended up hurting the low-paid workers, but this claim is based on really shaky evidence, and it's not about lost jobs.
The main source for this claim is a simple statistic: after 2014, the number of hours worked per minimum wage worker has declined to an extent that minimum wage workers on average make less money than before the hike in minimum wage.
This is however not a strong argument for two main reasons.
First, correlation is not causation. Seattle has been a tech boomtown in that same period, with a significant increase in better-than-minimum-wage jobs, both in tech and in the service industry and a very low unemployment rate. It's thus likely that people who used to work full time in minimum wage jobs because they had no other options simply now have better paid jobs. If those people are then replaced my multiple part-time workers who aren't looking for a full time job (students etc), the statistics would look the same.
In other words, just there is no evidence that the decrease in minimum wage hours worked is related to the increase in minimum wage, and there are better explanations available.
Second, free time has value, which is why part time workers will quite often cut their own hours if their wage increases. Instead of flipping burgers they might prioritize studying, or spending time with their family, or they might pick up an apprenticeship position in their own field. With an increased minimum wage, people working those jobs have more options in their life. This is kind of the point of earning more money in a capitalist economy.
There is (AFAIK) no evidence that the cut in minimum-wage hours was forced upon the workforcein Seattle, and there are studies to support the idea that given more money per hour, many people will choose to work less instead of earning more.
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You can't take one example and say that means that there is no scenario in which a raise to min wage costs jobs. There is some theoretical amount you can raise a min wage to that will cost jobs. If you raised it to $100, then there would obviously be job losses. So there is some number between where it is now and $100 that you will start seeing increasing job losses as it raises.
There are parts of the country that a $15 min wage is going to be a much higher percentage increase to min wage and average wage that it was in Seattle, and there just isn't data available for that type of increase and that is why job losses are being predicted for parts of the country.