STUDY: States with Higher Minimum Wage Have Had Less Employment Loss During the Great Recession

[Omaha Steve]

Important conclusions supporting minimum wage raises in this MBPC study.

http://wepartypatriots.com/wp/2012/08/20/study-states-with-higher-minimum-wage-have-had-less-employment-loss-during-the-great-recession/



Because attempts to increase the minimum wage are being met head on by the GOP talking point that doing so would cause employers to cut jobs and hours, the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center looked at two decades of data in their recent report, The Minimum Wage and Job Creation.

The study found that minimum wage increases have not had a negative effect on employment in New England.

In Massachusetts alone, the minimum wage has increased six times since 1995. During this period, growth in industries with concentrations of high minimum wage earners has been higher than total employment.

For many years the Massachusetts minimum wage was the same as, or close to, the federal minimum wage level. Legislation passed in 1995 increased the state’s hourly minimum wage from $4.25 to $4.75 starting in January, 1996 and to $5.25 in January, 1997, slightly ahead of increases in the federal minimum wage. Two sets of subsequent increases followed during the next decade—to $6.00 and $6.75 in 2000 and 2001, and to $7.50 and $8.00 in 2007 and 2008. Figure 1 shows the change in employment levels for all industry sectors and for sectors with high and low concentrations of minimum wage workers from January 1995 to January 2012.1 During the first part of this period, in the 1990s, all sectors—including those with a high concentration of minimum wage workers—experienced roughly similar growth levels, despite implementation of a higher minimum wage.

FULL story at link.

[mythology]

1. So if you give people who have little money and therefore would be the most likely to spend it

they do so which in turn causes others to have jobs? That's just crazy talk.

As we all know, jobs come from the wealthiest people down to us peons.

If you feel the need, imagine a sarcasm smilie here.

[Downwinder]

2. It does not take a rocket scientist

to know that if people have money in their pockets, everybody is going to do better.