Minimum Wage Increase

Increasing the minimum wage impacts not only the workers receiving the minimum wage. [...] The stagnation of the minimum wage over the past two decades is at least partially responsible for the plight of the working poor in Nova Scotia, many of whom earn somewhat more than the minimum wage. [...] Providing a real increase in the minimum wage would boost the wages of these and many more workers in need of a raise. [...] It addresses the economic impact of the minimum wage in the context of an economy that is producing too many low wage jobs, and considers some of the arguments against increasing the minimum wage. [...] The minimum wage sets a social standard or tone, and many public debates, as well as innumerable disputes inside the workplace, use the minimum wage as an implicit guide to construct arguments, to assess all wage scales, to measure the relative standards of one's enterprise.1 When the minimum wage is increased it creates an upward pressure on other wages.

Belman and Wolfson perform a meta-analysis on scores of published studies on the effects of the minimum wage to determine its impacts on employment, wages, poverty, and more.

The Clinton administration has claimed its proposal to increase the minimum wage would not affect employment; other research supports that a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs.

“Rolf shows that raising the minimum wage to $15 is both just and necessary, lest the American dream of middle class prosperity turn into a nightmare” (David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist). Combining history, economics, and commonsense political wisdom, The Fight for $15 makes a deeply informed case for a national fifteen-dollars-an-hour minimum wage as the only practical solution to reversing America’s decades-long slide toward becoming a low-wage nation. Drawing both on new scholarship and on his extensive practical experiences organizing workers and grappling with inequality across the United States, David Rolf, president of SEIU 775—which waged the successful Seattle campaign for a fifteen dollar minimum wage—offers an accessible explanation of “middle out” economics, an emerging popular economic theory that suggests that the origins of prosperity in capitalist economies lie with workers and consumers, not investors and employers. A blueprint for a different and hopeful American future, The Fight for $15 offers concrete tools, ideas, and inspiration for anyone interested in real change in our lifetimes. “The author’s plainspoken approach and stellar scholarship illuminate in-depth discussions about the deliberate policy decisions that began to decimate the middle class at the start of the 1980s as well as the insidious new ways in which big business continues to attack American workers today via stagnant wages, rampant subcontracting, unpredictable scheduling, and other detrimental practices associated with the so-called ‘share economy.’” —Kirkus Reviews “David Rolf has become the most successful advocate for raising wages in the twenty-first century.” —Andy Stern, senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy

Examines the impact of the 1996-97 increase in the minimum wage on the employment opportunities, wages, and incomes of law-wage workers and their households.

From David Card, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Alan Krueger, a provocative challenge to conventional wisdom about the minimum wage David Card and Alan B. Krueger have already made national news with their pathbreaking research on the minimum wage. Here they present a powerful new challenge to the conventional view that higher minimum wages reduce jobs for low-wage workers. In a work that has important implications for public policy as well as for the direction of economic research, the authors put standard economic theory to the test, using data from a series of recent episodes, including the 1992 increase in New Jersey's minimum wage, the 1988 rise in California's minimum wage, and the 1990–91 increases in the federal minimum wage. In each case they present a battery of evidence showing that increases in the minimum wage lead to increases in pay, but no loss in jobs. A distinctive feature of Card and Krueger's research is the use of empirical methods borrowed from the natural sciences, including comparisons between the "treatment" and "control" groups formed when the minimum wage rises for some workers but not for others. In addition, the authors critically reexamine the previous literature on the minimum wage and find that it, too, lacks support for the claim that a higher minimum wage cuts jobs. Finally, the effects of the minimum wage on family earnings, poverty outcomes, and the stock market valuation of low-wage employers are documented. Overall, this book calls into question the standard model of the labor market that has dominated economists' thinking on the minimum wage. In addition, it will shift the terms of the debate on the minimum wage in Washington and in state legislatures throughout the country. With a new preface discussing new data, Myth and Measurement continues to shift the terms of the debate on the minimum wage.

Offering evidence from both detailed individual country studies and homogenized statistics across the Latin American and Caribbean region, this book examines the impact of the minimum wage on wages, employment, poverty, income distribution and government budgets in the context of a large informal sector and predominantly unskilled workforces.

Monograph on minimum wages, with special reference to Canada - covers trends since 1965 concerning local level wage structure and wage determination, and deals with economic theory issues regarding employment, unemployment, income distribution and prices, effectiveness as an anti-poverty and income redistribution tool, and its preference to negative income tax. Bibliography pp. 111 to 119 and statistical tables.