Don’t Believe the Myths of Minimum Wage

Interview

2018 marked a minimum wage increase in Ontario which follows a trend throughout North America of raising the level minimum companies can pay workers. Large, heartless, corporations like Tim Hortons have released statements that they think paying people more is bad – they are wrong. It’s clearer than ever before: minimum wage increase have historically been good for the economy and people.

We have been raising the minimum wage for 78 years, and as a new study clearly reveals, 78 years of minimum-wage hikes have produced zero evidence of the “job-killing” consequences these headline writers want us to fear.

In a first-of-its-kind report, researchers at the National Employment Law Project pore over employment data from every federal increase since the minimum wage was first established, making “simple before-and-after comparisons of job-growth trends 12 months after each minimum-wage increase.”

What did the researchers find? The paper’s title says it all: “Raise Wages, Kill Jobs? Seven Decades of Historical Data Find No Correlation Between Minimum Wage Increases and Employment Levels.”

The results were clear. Of the nearly two dozen federal minimum-wage hikes since 1938, total year-over-year employment actually increased 68% of the time.

Read more.

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