Minimum-wage offensive could speed arrival of robot-powered restaurants
“The miracle is, the wage increase is driving the interest,” Brewer said. “But the innovation and the automation, they’re going after it even before the wages go up. Why wait?” - Lydia DePillis
Abstract from new National Bureau of Economic Research study:
We estimate the minimum wage’s effects on low-skilled workers’ employment and income trajectories. Our approach exploits two dimensions of the data we analyze. First, we compare workers in states that were bound by recent increases in the federal minimum wage to workers in states that were not. Second, we use 12 months of baseline data to divide low-skilled workers into a “target” group, whose baseline wage rates were directly affected, and a “within-state control” group with slightly higher baseline wage rates. Over three subsequent years, we find that binding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers.
[…]Over the late 2000s, the average effective minimum wage rose by 30 percent across the United States. We estimate that these minimum wage increases reduced the national employment-to-population ratio by 0.7 percentage point.
That comes out to 1.4 million workers who lost their jobs, thanks to minimum wage mandates. And those are primarily young, unskilled workers who are affected – people trying to get a start in the workplace and build their resumes, so they can move up.
Harvard economist Greg Mankiw explains the top 14 views that a majority professional economists agree on, and here’s #12:
12. A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers. (79%)
And these facts affect more than the restaurant / fast food business. Here’s an example from ABC News of another business that is having to shut its doors: independent bookstores. It always seems that the people on the lowest “start” rungs of the economic-independence ladder are most affected by bad liberal economic policies.
