Federal Reserve Says State Minimum Wage Hikes Have Cost Up to 200,000 Jobs

Well folks it looks like even the Federal Reserve is agreeing with many people who argue against high minimum wages.

Seems the Fed of San Francisco says as many as 200,000 jobs have been lost due to some States' interventionalist wage policies.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated as many as 500,000 jobs would go away in a report last year.

I guess the famous $10.10 talk was in fact some kind of general Red Herring.

The article has links to the reports.

Federal Reserve Says State Minimum Wage Hikes Have Cost Up to 200,000 Jobs

Minimum wage hikes at the state level have reduced the number of jobs by as many as 200,000, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The Fed study comes just less than two years after a study by the Congressional Budget Office asserted that increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost 500,000 jobs nationally.

Despite numbers from nonpartisan studies, President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, as well as Democratic governors across the country, regard a minimum wage hike as a political winner. All three Democratic presidential candidates are running calling for a minimum wage hike.

Well Now WHAT?

a reply to: xuenchen

This just confirms what people that understand economics have been saying. If you try to artificially increase pay then people lose jobs and goods cost more.I know this is an emotional issue for many people...especially the entitlement generation of Millennials, but the fact is that you cannot magically raise pay without consequences.

Would you rather work for what the job is worth or just be unemployed? I firmly believe that if you want a better paying job then you must position yourself to have skills that are in-demand. It is YOUR responsibility to make yourself marketable. You can't simply do a menial job an expect to get paid like someone who has the proper training and motivation.

If you can be replaced by a kiosk then you can expect to have your job eliminated if the rate of pay exceeds your value. Self-checkouts and automation are going to eliminate low paying jobs if people continue to insist they should be paid an artificially high wage.

Cloward-Piven at it's best

The more people out of work, the more on the Governments teat, eventually it will collapse.

This is actually a double hitter for the administration- more people on assistance and more goods out of reach of the poor.

A greater divide...

I wonder how many jobs, homes, businesses, etc etc the Federal Reserve has cost the country over the decades...?

Kind of ironic how the very entity that controls and causes economic woes.... is pointing out economic woes.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Well folks it looks like even the Federal Reserve is agreeing with many people who argue against high minimum wages.

Seems the Fed of San Francisco says as many as 200,000 jobs have been lost due to some States' interventionalist wage policies.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated as many as 500,000 jobs would go away in a report last year.

I guess the famous $10.10 talk was in fact some kind of general Red Herring.

The article has links to the reports.

Federal Reserve Says State Minimum Wage Hikes Have Cost Up to 200,000 Jobs

Minimum wage hikes at the state level have reduced the number of jobs by as many as 200,000, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The Fed study comes just less than two years after a study by the Congressional Budget Office asserted that increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost 500,000 jobs nationally.

Despite numbers from nonpartisan studies, President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, as well as Democratic governors across the country, regard a minimum wage hike as a political winner. All three Democratic presidential candidates are running calling for a minimum wage hike.

Well Now WHAT?

Anyone with a lick of common sense knows you can't raise wages artificially without costing jobs or raising prices.

The Federal Reserve is an abomination upon this country, excuse me if I don't take anything they say seriously.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Well folks it looks like even the Federal Reserve is agreeing with many people who argue against high minimum wages.

Seems the Fed of San Francisco says as many as 200,000 jobs have been lost due to some States' interventionalist wage policies.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated as many as 500,000 jobs would go away in a report last year.

I guess the famous $10.10 talk was in fact some kind of general Red Herring.

The article has links to the reports.

Federal Reserve Says State Minimum Wage Hikes Have Cost Up to 200,000 Jobs

Minimum wage hikes at the state level have reduced the number of jobs by as many as 200,000, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The Fed study comes just less than two years after a study by the Congressional Budget Office asserted that increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost 500,000 jobs nationally.

Despite numbers from nonpartisan studies, President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, as well as Democratic governors across the country, regard a minimum wage hike as a political winner. All three Democratic presidential candidates are running calling for a minimum wage hike.

Well Now WHAT?

Unemployed people are a win/win for the Democrats. More people stuck dependent on govt = more Democrat votes for free stuff.

But if the cost of living keeps going up and up and up, then why shouldn't wages (like minimum) go up at some point as well?
If wages in the US never go up, I guess it could end up being the country who ends up with all the sweat shop type wages, manufacturing for the world......

I do disagree with raising wages $5 all at once. Wages need to go up in little bits, every year, at the least.
But to only be bringing them up to what still seems like poverty levels

originally posted by: snowspirit
But if the cost of living keeps going up and up and up, then why shouldn't wages (like minimum) go up at some point as well?
If wages in the US never go up, I guess it could end up being the country who ends up with all the sweat shop type wages, manufacturing for the world......

I do disagree with raising wages $5 all at once. Wages need to go up in little bits, every year, at the least.
But to only be bringing them up to what still seems like poverty levels

Cost of living and individual wages are not related.

Some jobs see their wages decline as the supply of workers increase whereas other jobs might see their wages increase rapidly due to high demand.

originally posted by: Blazemore2000
The Federal Reserve is an abomination upon this country, excuse me if I don't take anything they say seriously.

It's funny how many people want to see the fed abolished but will gladly eat this all up.

Shocking the place that controls all the money and is controlled by the people will all the money is saying paying people more is a bad idea...

Welcome to Social/Economic engineering 101.

Somebody has the real numbers right?

a reply to: Metallicus

I would normally agree, however the cost of living continues to go up every year leaving Min wages stagnated.

I would agree if you want better pay then go to school and get an education, however, there is not enough jobs for the educated American any longer.

Many Collage grads have moved back home with mom and dad because lack of work. Many Collage grads are forced to take min wage jobs.

No one can make a living and pay bills on min wage.

The problem we have is corporate greed and their out sourcing our jobs over seas for slave labor.

Even white collar work is outsourced, Obama has allowed over a million people with work visa's to come in our country and take professional jobs away from our Americans.

Many of these Jobs I am talking about are Scientist, Doctors, Professors, Engineers, and so on. These people have the same education as many of Americans and then some, but are willing to work for far less money than Americans.

This needs to stop. It's greed and more is not enough.

Having lived through a minimum wage hike as a minimum wage worker, I have seen every single one of the negative impacts of such an artificial hike:

1.) Wage devaluation
2.) Loss of jobs
3.) Price increases

All three occurred in the area after the hike. All three occurred even in the very business I worked at too.

a reply to: Informer1958

I can tell you from the perspective of the business my husband works for, they would prefer to keep a lot of their manufacturing and R&D in the US. The infrastructure is better and they have ready sources for raw materials, but since the Obama admin took over, the regulatory/tax/health care,benefit environment has become downright hostile. So while they are not pulling up stakes, their US expansion has slowed way down over what the plans were during the Bush years and more foreign expansion has occurred (can't say outsourcing, not a US company).

Roll back some of that hostility and the company might start expanding stateside again with jobs.

I am betting they aren't alone in that attitude. It really is very attractive to do business in the US for a lot of reasons, but the government structure has made it much less so over the past decade.

originally posted by: ketsuko
Having lived through a minimum wage hike as a minimum wage worker, I have seen every single one of the negative impacts of such an artificial hike:

1.) Wage devaluation
2.) Loss of jobs
3.) Price increases

All three occurred in the area after the hike. All three occurred even in the very business I worked at too.

just think how many jobs businesses can create, if we lowered the minimum wage to a dollar an hour.....millions more employed, and all those jobs that went overseas would now come back here....(sarcasm)

a reply to: Sremmos80

Because giving poor people a livable wage hurts the profit margins of the people at the top. All they see are numbers and don't see normal hard working people having to work two jobs and still struggling. They don't care about anything except the graphs showing continued growth.

a reply to: xuenchen

I've been saying that the min wage increase is a double edged sword.
It's great for employers. Because now they can hire better workers.
Bad for less skilled workers. Why would an employer hire a crappy worker.

And the report bears out my point.

Of course, the labor market is more complicated. Most important, workers have varying skill levels, and a higher minimum wage will lead employers to hire fewer low-skilled workers and more high-skilled workers. This “labor-labor” substitution may not show up as job losses unless researchers focus on the least-skilled workers whose wages are directly pushed up by the minimum wage. Moreover, fewer jobs for the least-skilled are most important from a policy perspective, since they are the ones the minimum wage is intended to help.

originally posted by: snowspirit
But if the cost of living keeps going up and up and up, then why shouldn't wages (like minimum) go up at some point as well?

It does go up and in today's dollars it has been pretty steady at about $7 to 8.5 since 1950. 1968 was the best ever with about $10 in today's dollars.

originally posted by: CranialSponge
I wonder how many jobs, homes, businesses, etc etc the Federal Reserve has cost the country over the decades...?

Kind of ironic how the very entity that controls and causes economic woes.... is pointing out economic woes.

And the Fed counters these economic woes by raising interest rates..

...candy from a baby..

a reply to: xuenchen

These "minimum wages" don't ever seem to be cutting jobs off the topside . Always the bottom end.

Whats up with that??

Will our Sun ever shine on a day when "200, 000 jobs" go from the topside?