By Frank Shostak
According to mainstream economists, the question of whether increasing the minimum wage also increases unemployment is empirical. However, the logic of economic analysis says otherwise.
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175 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 1 Apr 2024
Anecdotal but throughout the course of running my business we dealt with numerous increases in minimum wage. The largest being when min wage in Ontario jumped from 12.75 to 14. We never paid min wage but some employees made a couple dollars more than min wage but those employees would expect increases too. We never eliminated any jobs over min wage increases. Our strategy would always be to try to increase our rates where we could to reflect the additional labour cost and if that wasn't possible or enough we would try to find efficiencies and reduce labour hours. Also, if we had long standing employees who were making 5 or 6 dollars per hour more than min wage, if they left we would promote from within for their roles but pay a little less and then hire underneath closer to the min wage level.
A rough example: say we had a supervisor making 20 an hour who left for another job, we would aim to replace them with someone currently making around 17 who would be happy with a raise to 18.50 or 19 and then fill their vacant role with someone making 16.
And sometimes if none of these options were feasible we just had to suck it up and eat it out of the profit margin.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 1 Apr 2024
That's very interesting. In labor economics, we know shockingly little about how companies actually manage all this stuff internally. (It turns out no one wants to open themselves up to the liability that would come with letting researchers comb through all their records.
My advisor had done some work on the effect you're talking about. We say that the minimum wage compresses the wage distribution. I think there are still measurable effects pretty far above minimum wage, since you have to keep everyone's relative position stable.
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65 sats \ 13 replies \ @Bell_curve 1 Apr 2024
https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/-companies/your-guide-to-californias-new-anhour-minimum-wage-for-fast-food-workers/ar-BB1kTi3j?
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0 sats \ 12 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 1 Apr 2024
Summary? My browser rejected the link.
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65 sats \ 11 replies \ @Bell_curve 1 Apr 2024
California new minimum wage for fast food employees is $20 per hour. Starts today but no joke
Most fast food franchises are operated by small business owners
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10 sats \ 10 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 1 Apr 2024
As if California needed more jobless people or a higher cost of living.
I think Washington is planning on a $25 one soon.
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73 sats \ 9 replies \ @riberet19 2 Apr 2024
I'm not from the United States, is $20 a lot for a fast food employee? My logic senses that it's too much, but I want to know.
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20 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 2 Apr 2024
They started automating those jobs when the wages were around $10, so $20 is a lot.
Fast food is low quality products that people only buy because they're cheap. If you make the inputs more expensive, then it becomes impossible to sell it at a price people are willing to pay.
Also, it is not a job that attracts a high caliber of worker, so you're not going to get much out of them. Of course, higher pay can help with that problem.
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