Saturday, February 13, 2016

High Minimum Wage Stunts Job Growth

From Generation Opportunity:
According to Investor’s Business Daily, when Washington D.C., Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago started paying low-skilled workers more, job creation dropped to its slowest in the last five years in the leisure and hospitality sector. Many minimum wage jobs fall within this field, which includes restaurants and hotels.
And this isn't just a quarter-to-quarter slowdown. The cities deviate from other parts of their states over the same time period:
When San Francisco and Oakland bumped their minimum wages to $12.25, the highest in the country, employment rates for the fourth quarter dropped from 4.7 percent to 2.5 percent. And yet in the rest of California where minimum wage was around $3.25 less, employment grew by 4.8 percent last year.
And from the Investor's Business Daily article:
Job gains at Seattle-area restaurants rose just 1.8% from a year ago, down from 4.6% growth a year earlier, in their worst year for employment since 2009. Meanwhile, in the rest of the Washington state, restaurant employment gains accelerated to 6.3%.

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