Publication Selection Bias in
Minimum-Wage Research?
Changes in Employment Composition: Firms may adjust to a higher
minimum-wage by upgrading the skill level of their workforce rather than cutting the level of their staffing.
Cecilia Soto, a columnist and former presidential candidate for the Partido del Trabajo (PT), agreed with the PRD on the need to push through a
minimum-wage measure.
25 an hour a full-time
minimum-wage worker earns $290 a week * and $15,080 a year.
However, the government also worries that companies will increase the number of employees registered under the
minimum-wage bracket, as these salaries will not be taxed.
1 percent bump is the first
minimum-wage increase in five years.
If we do not balance a
minimum-wage increase with economic relief for small businesses," he said, "we will stifle job creation and shut the employment door on the very individuals we are trying to help.
And this is what generally happens: between 1998 and 2003, when the federal
minimum-wage law remained unchanged, the median
minimum-wage employee received a 10 percent raise within a year of starting his job; more than two-thirds of those starting at the minimum, according to an analysis by the Employment Policies Institute, were being paid more a year later.
However, teenagers are not the only group of workers who are paid at the
minimum-wage level.
Last summer the Tucson lawyer launched a campaign to collect 300,000 signatures to secure the necessary 183,917 to place a
minimum-wage referendum on the state's ballot.
Only in Quebec, all
minimum-wage workers were over the MBM poverty line.
The recent
minimum-wage debate is symbolic of an underlying crisis.
1 elasticity is taken from studies of the employment effects of minimum wages for entire age groups and is not equivalent to - as some have asserted - the elasticity of demand for
minimum-wage workers.
Indeed, this is a popular view among economists who favor national
minimum-wage increases: They will admit to their colleagues that such increases are not the best way to help the poor, but argue that it is the only politically feasible option.
In 1968 a family of three with one
minimum-wage earner had a standard of living 17 percent above the poverty line.