Minimum Wage Hikes Leave Less-Experienced Workers Behind | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Jon Sanders, who is Director of Regulatory Studies for the John Locke Foundation.

    The John Locke Foundation's policy position on the minimum wage concludes with this recommendation:

  • Keep the state minimum wage no higher than the federal minimum wage. Create no greater harm to the poorest, least-skilled, and least-experienced workers in North Carolina.

    As explained in the position paper, and as I show in a recent Spotlight paper on the subject, minimum wage hikes hurt the very people they're supposed to help (that is the subtitle to the paper).

    As I also make clear, minimum wage hikes don't hurt everyone. It's a tradeoff. Some workers will enjoy higher wages, but they will be the ones with more skills, more education, more soft skills, and other factors that employers consider make them more employable at higher wages.

    The ones who get left behind, unemployable at the higher wage floor, will be the poorest, the least-skilled, the disadvantaged. This is a consistent finding in research. They're basically cut off from the workforce.

    A thing about this tradeoff: because it's a law, it's a tradeoff enforced by the police power of the state. It's not a choice made by individual employers on whether to hire the most experienced applicant for a commensurate wage or take a chance on someone who needs experience and skills training, for a commensurate wage. The law says you have to pay the highly-experienced level wage or else.

    New research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research on the minimum wage hikes in Seattle doesn't overturn anything. Researchers found:

  • Earnings were raised only by "an average of $8-$12 per week"
  • The "entirety of these gains" went to workers with greater experience and skill
  • One-fourth of that came from "experienced workers making up for lost hours in Seattle with work outside the city limits"
  • Slightly less job turnover (down 8 percent)
  • "Significant" reduction in people joining the workforce

    As my colleague Joe Coletti summed it up,

  • Experienced workers in Seattle had their hours cut but were able to find work outside the city to offset their lost wages, less experienced workers had no gains, and those out of work were less likely to enter the workforce.

    That's an expensive policy tradeoff to force on people. It's why I say that hiking the minimum wage breaks the very first rule of policies intended to help the poor:

    Policies put forth to help the poor should actually work to help the poor.

    For North Carolina, a state that values being over seeming, it's not the sort of tradeoff we should want.
Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




Spellings Out at UNC, CJ Confirms John Locke Foundation Guest Editorial, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics The Myth of “Wage Push” Inflation


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

Pope Francis lambasted leftist gender ideology during an address this week, warning that it presented an extreme danger to mankind.
amnesty would just encourage more illegal aliens to storm our borders
The Christmas candy was barely off the shelves when the Valentine’s candy appeared. Red and pink hearts with caramel and nut-filled chocolate goodness caught our eye. We are reminded of how we love love. Young love, especially.
far left sugar daddy has also funded anti-Israel groups and politicians in US
Be careful what you wish for, you may get it
America needs to wake up and get its priorities right
Former President Donald Trump suggested this week that if he becomes president again, he might allow Prince Harry to be deported.
It's a New Year, which means it's time to make resolutions — even for prominent evangelical leaders. The Babylon Bee asked the following well-known figures in the faith what they hope to accomplish in 2024:
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit a Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic, reportedly the first time a president or vice president has visited an abortion facility.

HbAD1

An eight-mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville has been temporarily closed due to a string of “human and bear interactions,” the National Parks Service announced.
University of Wisconsin tried to punish conservatives for the fact that liberals regularly commit crimes to silence opposition
most voters think EU officials not doing a good job on illegal immigration
Come from behind by GOP candidate is a blueprint to 2024
Biden spending and energy policies to blame
Tuberculosis carried by illegal invaders has already infected Texas cattle
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that the only campaign promise President Joe Biden has delivered on as president is the complete dismantling of the U.S. southern border.
Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day: military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.

HbAD2

 
Back to Top