Minimum wage hike cost teenagers thousands of jobs, study says

By Tim Pearce

Raising the minimum wage has cost young and low-skilled workers thousands of jobs in the fast-food restaurant sector since 2013, according to University of Wisconsin economics professor Noah Williams.

Williams tracked and compared employment data in Minnesota and Wisconsin from 2014 to 2018, over which Minnesota’s minimum wage increased incrementally from $6 an hour to $9.65 in January 2018. Wisconsin’s minimum wage remained at the federal level of $7.25 an hour, the Minnesota Watchdog reported.

Generally, as the minimum wage increases “businesses will demand less labor, which could mean fewer workers and/or shorter hours per worker,” Williams said, according to Minnesota Watchdog. “There were workers willing to work for wages that were less than the new, higher minimum wage and businesses that were willing to hire them for that … The distortion is that the minimum wage rules out mutually beneficial agreements between workers and firms.”

The fast-food industries in both states were growing at similar paces in 2014 when the minimum wage of each rested on the federal level. As the Minnesota’s minimum continued to rise, a disparity between employment growth in each state’s fast-food industry developed and widened.

“In total, from July 2014 to May 2018, employment at fast-food restaurants grew by 4.8 percent in Minnesota, but by 8.8 percent in Wisconsin,” Williams said. “While other factors may have played a role, the timing of the trend break suggests that the minimum-wage increases in Minnesota accounted for much of this four percentage-point gap.”

Minnesota’s minimum wage increase is helping raise wages and lift families out of poverty, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said in a December statement before the final raise was mandated.

“In 2014, I worked with the DFL Legislature to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage three times and to increase it thereafter with inflation,” Dayton said. “Now, that law will further boost incomes for more than 250,000 Minnesotans and their families who are working hard to lift themselves out of poverty.”

More than half — about 54 percent — of those making the minimum wage or less in Minnesota are age 24 or younger, the Minnesota Watchdog reported.

Minimum wage laws in a dozen states will cost the U.S. roughly 261,000 new jobs in 2018. New York will be hit the hardest where various state and municipal minimum wage hikes will suppress job growth by nearly 100,000, according to a study by the American Action Forum, a free market advocacy group.

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4 thoughts on “Minimum wage hike cost teenagers thousands of jobs, study says

  1. When young people work for minimum wage, they are receiving training in how the world works.
    After all they could be going to college, and not only not getting paid for their time, they are paying for it!
    I am grateful for the minimum wage jobs I had, starting as a bag boy at the A&P, for $2.15 an hour.
    I learned about working, and had “experience” which was valued by subsequent employers.
    Making every job pay enough to support a family is a losing proposition.
    That seems to be the plan, though, not a mistake. That’s where the UBI comes into play, we can eat and watch TV all day, and do nothing, while we are slowly exterminated by gmo’s, fluoride, insane TV “infotainment”, tide-pods, transgenderism, etc.
    Then there will be more room for endless hordes of immigrants, to replace our genocided race.

  2. Liberals…creating “solutions” that are much worse than the problem. Thankfully they can feel clever and morally superior

  3. Understanding that there must be some controls on capitalism, it should be transparently obvious to anyone intelligent enough not to cross the street while texting that left-wing simpletons have riddled our economic system with hare-brained socialist schemes and then bray that capitalism doesn’t work. How funny was it that several years back, the socialist geniuses in Burlington passed an ordinance requiring employers to pay a “livable wage.” It wasn’t long before that grocery darling City Market complained it could not pay the livable wage and remain in operation. And of course it promptly received an exemption from the governing Burlington brain trust. And how about that socialist utopian utility boondoggle called Burlington Telecom? Drowning in red ink city officials illegally borrowed from the city’s pension fund to support it, and nary a single socialist went to jail, or was even indicted. Yet with irrefutable evidence that central planning (aka socialism) doesn’t work, Burlington and Vermont voters will continually vote pain upon themselves by electing and re-electing socialist clowns.

  4. Well, this is earth-shattering news, why would anyone think a part-time job slinging
    burgers or working in a small store could possibly think they could sustain keeping
    a person on ………………….. Liberal Idiots !!

    This $15 wage is just a boondoggle from the left, kind of like Bernie stating free this
    free that !! It sounds good until you look at the whole picture and who’s paying for it

    Just go into any small restaurant or store and ask the help for assistance, from what
    I have seen there not worth the $5 an hour, attitude & a cell phone all they have.

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