Truth Hurts: The Minimum Wage Hike's Victims

Hiking the minimum wage killed almost as many low-end jobs as did the economic collapse.

by Preston Cooper
January 12, 2016

Hiking the minimum wage killed almost as many low-end jobs as did the economic collapse.

This is University of California-San Diego Professor Jeffrey Clemens’ conclusion from his just published supplement to his landmark 2014 study. He says that federal minimum wage hikes from 2006 to 2009 accounted for 43 percent of the decline in employment among young, low-skilled workers during the Great Recession.

Young, low-skilled workers— defined as individuals between 16 and 30 without a high school degree— are the most likely to be hurt by minimum wage hikes because they are the least likely to have skills that employers consider valuable. Businesses might be willing to take on these individuals at low wages in order to train them before moving them up to higher-paying work. But when the government sets a high minimum wage, that first step on the career path might disappear.

Clemens’ new study confirms this longstanding theory. Young, low-skilled workers were hi…