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The Center for American Progress reports:
Think a higher minimum wage is a job killer? Think again: The states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have seen higher employment growth since then than the states that kept theirs at the same rate.
The minimum wage went up in 13 states Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington either thanks to automatic increases in line with inflation or new legislation, as Ben Wolcott reports in his analysis at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The average change in employment for those states over the first five months of the year as compared with the last five of 2013 is 0.99 percent, while the average for all remaining states is 0.68 percent.
Digging deeper, all but one of those states are experiencing increases in employment, and nine of them have seen growth above the median rate.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Friday July 04 2014, @04:42PM
Ok, these are studies supposedly of the short term effects of minimum wage increases, but I see several flaws. First, it doesn't actually measure employment around the increase, unless the increase happens to occur at the year boundary. Second, there's no consideration of the degree of increase. Reading through the report, I see this:
Three of the four states that passed legislation ended up at the bottom of the group of these 13 states by employment increase (with all three below the employment increase rate of the states which didn't increase minimum wage). The other nine states, which had automatic minimum wage increases fared far better. At a glance, the states without current minimum wage increases improved by 0.68%, the 13 states above with any sort of minimum wage increase by 0.99%, the 9 states with automatic, inflation adjusted schemes by 1.19% (my calculation), and the 4 states with impromptu minimum wage hikes by 0.34% (my calculation). There is a very pronounced apparent difference in outcome there which may or may not be relevant (this is after all very small sample sizes).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @05:04PM
Was there an actual study? As far as I can tell, its just them taking the facts and making a statement about the data. It does show that studies should be done in this area, but as we all know, the people who most need to hear the results of those studies are the best at starting from conclusions and ignoring facts.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday July 04 2014, @08:53PM
Interestingly there is a plausible mechanism for that - decreasing uncertainty and risk.
Increasing employment implies expansion and _investment_. Investment decisions are made (well, sometimes :-)) taking into account risk, and increasing cost of employees is a risk. If the increase is automatic, then the cost - although increased - is _known_ and a risk is eliminated, possibly increasing the chance of investment being made.
On the other hand, even in the states that did not actually increase, there may have been a risk that they would - a risk that might postpone or dissuade investment.
Of course, that is what happens when the economy is generally growing - in a recession or depression an automatic increase may work the other way and employers may cut back staff sooner because they _know_ that wage costs will increase.