Minimum wage

A minimum wage is a wage rate established by collective bargaining or by government regulation that specifies the lowest rate at which labour may be employed. The rate may be defined in terms of the amount, period (i.e., hourly, weekly, monthly, etc.), and scope of coverage. For example, employers may be allowed to count tips received by employees as credits toward the mandated minimum-wage level.

See also: Price controls

Effects of the minimum wage

A minimum wage law is compulsory unemployment. The law says: it is illegal, and therefore criminal, for anyone to hire anyone else below the level of X dollars an hour. This means, plainly and simply, that a large number of free and voluntary wage contracts are now outlawed and hence that there will be a large amount of unemployment. The minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.

A minimum wage leads to a reduction in the demand for labor and an increase in the supply of labor in the relevant market — usually, the market for low-skill workers. It removes the ability of some workers to compete by accepting lower wages and shuts them out of the labor force. As a result, it reduces job opportunities for these workers.

But there are additional, hidden costs of these interventions, which are more difficult to detect but perhaps more insidious. For example, one effect of a minimum wage is to reduce the availability of on-the-job training, since more resources are required simply to hire and retain a workforce. And further interventions in the labor market (for example, safety regulations and payroll taxes) make it still more costly to employ labor. These burdens together reduce a firm's willingness to hire laborers and — in the long run — must reduce the number of opportunities for those laborers to acquire valuable job skills. Far from increasing opportunities for the working poor, a minimum wage actually restricts their mobility.

Firms faced with minimum wage laws often substitute skilled for unskilled labor. A report from the Show-Me Institute offers an illustrative example: Suppose that a job can be done by either three unskilled workers or two skilled workers. If the unskilled wage is $5 per hour and the skilled wage is $8 per hour, the firm will use unskilled labor and produce the output at a cost of $15. However, if we impose a minimum wage to $6 per hour, the firm will instead use two skilled workers and produce for $16 as opposed to the $18 cost of using unskilled workers. In the "official data" this shows up as a small job loss — in this case, only one job — but we see an increase in average wages to eight dollars per hour in spite of the fact that the least skilled workers are now unemployed.

There is also a hidden social cost in minimum wage policies. Debates over a minimum wage erode social fabric by placing workers and their employers in opposition to one another. While there have been many legitimate reasons for some tension to exist between firms and workers, minimum wage policies set them in unnecessary opposition to one another over employment contracts, which are by nature cooperative and mutually beneficial. Encouraging the view that employment is a raw deal has created needless acrimony. At the margin, this intimidates people and discourages some from becoming employers themselves.

The prohibition of certain kinds of labor contracts also discriminates against — paradoxically — the law-abiding. Just as legal prohibitions on the use and sale of drugs have lured the lawless into the drug trade, prohibitions on certain forms of labor ensure that only those lacking in scruples will be left on the demand side of the market for, say, child labor and the like.

If restrictions, regulations, and price floors create massive deadweight losses, they also create incentives for firms and individuals to evade those restrictions, regulations, and price floors. Those with a comparative advantage in evading (or violating) the law will be most successful; thus, labor market regulation gives implicit encouragement and support to the unscrupulous. Restriction and regulation reduces the relative price of dishonesty, which means we can expect greater levels of it in the marketplace.

Effects on minorities

Minimum wage is especially harmful for minorities. According to a study of two labor economists, Professors William Even (Miami University of Ohio) and David Macpherson (Trinity University), each 10 percent increase in a federal or state minimum wage decreased employment of white males 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 effect is similar for hours worked: each 10 percent increase reduced hours worked by 3 percent among white males, 1.7 percent for Hispanic males, and by 6.6 percent for black males. The consequences of the minimum wage for the last subgroup were even more harmful than the consequences of the recession.

Empirical research

For many years it has been a matter of conventional wisdom among economists that the minimum wage causes fewer jobs to exist than would be the case without it. This is simply a matter of price theory, taught in every economics textbook, requiring no elaborate analysis to justify. Were this not the case, there would be no logical reason why the minimum wage could not be set at $10, $100, or $1 million per hour.

Historically, defenders of the minimum wage have not disputed the disemployment effects of the minimum wage, but argued that on balance the working poor were better off. In other words, the higher incomes of those with jobs offset the lower incomes of those without jobs, as a result of the minimum wage

This notion was disputed by the work of three economists: David Card and Alan Krueger of Princeton, and Lawrence Katz of Harvard. Their studies of increases in the minimum wage in California, Texas and New Jersey found no loss of jobs among fast food restaurants that were surveyed before and after the increase. This led the Clinton Administration to advance the theory that modest increases in the minimum wage will have no impact on employment.

However, an extensive body of work demonstrates a different conclusion. Joint Economic Committee Republicans published a survey of virtually every empirical study on the minimum wage in February, 1995. It concluded that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduced teenage employment by 1% to 3%.

It also indicated that the minimum wage has wide-ranging negative effects that go beyond unemployment. For example, higher minimum wages encourage employers to cut back on training, thus depriving low wage workers of an important means of long-term advancement, in return for a small increase in current income. For many workers this is a very bad trade-off.

Links

• Minimum wage on Wikipedia
• Good Intentions 2of3 Minimum Wage, Licensing, and Labor Laws with Walter Williams (video)
• Paid and Unpaid Labor by Art Carden, July 2009
• Minimum Wage, Minimum Tax by Mark Thornton, November 1996
• The Minimum Wage, Discrimination, and Inequality by Art Carden, January 2009
• Mythology of the Minimum Wage by D.W. MacKenzie, May 2006
• Is Anyone Shocked by High Teenage Unemployment? by William L. Anderson, August 2010
• Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era (pdf) by Thomas C. Leonard, 2005
• The Minimum Wage and The Forgotten Man by Art Carden, May 2011
• Do We Really Need a Minimum Wage? by Charlie Virgo, May 2011
• Ontario Sets Minimum Wage Then Subsidizes It by Gregory Cummings, April 2012
• Minimum-wage laws are costly for the unemployed by Jeff Jacoby, July 2012