A higher minimum wage will likely reduce employment among the very low-wage, low-skilled workers that minimum wage proponents are trying to help. A large body of research illustrates the disemployment effects of minimum wage.

Moreover, even if many workers affected by a higher minimum wage would see increased wages and suffer neither reductions in employment nor hours, minimum wages may do little or nothing to help poor and low-income families. Minimum wage laws mandate high wages for low-wage workers, rather than higher earnings for low-income families. But low-wage work and low family income are quite distinct, because many minimum wage workers are in higher-income families, and many poor families have no workers.

Mandating higher wages for low-wage workers in high-income families, such as teenagers from welloff families working a summer job, does nothing to help poor and low-income families. Indeed, if the job losses from a higher minimum wage are borne by minimum wage workers in poor, low-income families, minimum wages can have unintended harmful distributional effects — possibly increasing the number of poor or low-income families. Reflecting these issues, research fails to establish that higher minimum wages help poor or low-income families.

These are perennial issues in debates about a higher minimum wage. In the current economic environment, with unemployment remaining high and job growth fairly stagnant, it may be far wiser for policy to focus on increasing employment among the unemployed, rather than trying to increase the wages of the employed.

The post Should Missouri Raise Its Minimum Wage? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In November, Missouri voters will vote on Proposition B, which would raise the state’s minimum wage to $6.50 per hour and thereafter index it to the Consumer Price Index, ensuring annual minimum wage increases of the same size (in percentage terms) as the rate of inflation. This paper provides an overview, based on a large body of existing research, of evidence on the effects of federal and especially state minimum wage increases.

The central goal of raising the minimum wage is to raise incomes of low-income families and reduce poverty. There are three reasons why raising the minimum may not help to achieve this goal. First, a higher minimum wage may discourage employers from using the very low-wage, low-skill workers that minimum wages are intended to help. Second, a higher minimum wage may hurt poor and low-income families rather than help them, if the disemployment effects are concentrated among workers in low-income families. And third, a higher minimum wage may reduce training, schooling, and work experience—all of which are important sources of higher wages—and hence make it harder for workers to attain the higher-wage jobs that may be the best means to an acceptable level of family income.

The evidence from a large body of existing research suggests that minimum wage increases do more harm than good. Minimum wages reduce employment of young and less-skilled workers. Minimum wages deliver no net benefits to poor or low-income families, and if anything make them worse off, increasing poverty. Finally, there is some evidence that minimum wages have longer-run adverse effects, lowering the acquisition of skills and therefore lowering wages and earnings even beyond the age when individuals are most directly affected by a higher minimum.

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The post The Economic Effects of Minimum Wages: What Might Missouri Expect from Passage of Proposition B? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.