Let me see if I can’t interpret the graph above, gleaned from an Investors Business Daily article, not a usual source for me. It looks like the minimum wage hike in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles did not result in employment decreases in SF or DC but did in LA. They did result in a slowing of the increase in employment in all three markets with LA being the most notable. Does that sound about right?
Is that encouraging or discouraging? Some people got raises. Other than in LA there weren’t a lot of job losses. Some people did not get jobs who otherwise might have. Here’s what the author, Jed Graham, says about Chicago’s minimum wage hike:
The Chicago area saw its weakest year of leisure-and-hospitality sector job growth since 2009. The Windy City’s $1.75-an-hour minimum-wage hike to $10 an hour took effect in July. Annual employment gains averaged just 1.1% from October through December, less than half the pace seen in 2014.
Chicago’s minimum wage will get another bump to $10.50 an hour on July 1, another stop on the way to $13 by 2019.
The Chicago data cover the Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights area, of which Chicago represents only about 40% of the population.
He pretty obviously sees that as a Bad Thing:
Liberals fighting for a dramatic increase in the minimum wage have insisted that there would be a negligible impact on job creation. Though the data are preliminary and overly broad, Washington D.C., Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago seem to be finding out that the reality isn’t so benign.
Was that the claim? Or was the claim that it wouldn’t have much effect on employment, a slightly different issue? Maybe both were claimed. My concern was more with employment.
I’m of mixed minds. As a matter of policy I think the results so far support my view that we should want wages to rise and the number of people seeking minimum wage jobs to shrink which would mean less immigration.
I don’t honestly see how wanting to increase the minimum wage and wanting to increase the number of low-skilled and unskilled workers who come to the United States will work together.
I believed that raising the minimum wage would decrease future jobs, and have limited effect on existing jobs. Part of the issue is going to be metropolitan-specific, how convenient will it be to relocate the business in a neighboring jurisdiction. I guess BLS doesn’t do unemployment breakdowns below the metro area?
Yes, I recall that, PD. You called it correctly.
When LA announced the hike, there were a few articles I remember reading that considered the implications with respect to LA’s convoluted borders (There is, for example, one skinny corridor linking LA proper with Long Beach). None of the the surrounding areas hiked their rates as far as I’m aware…the implications of that are pretty obvious. Had the wage hike been for all of LA county instead, we probably would not see such a noticeable drop.