EPI Research (Page 26 )

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  The 1992 New Jersey Minimum Wage Increase: How Much Did it Affect Family Income?

  May 1996

  The vast majority of economists agree that minimum wage hikes create a tradeoff: lost jobs for some, but increased benefits for others. Recent research has investigated the losers in this tradeoff by examining the composition of job loss. After an increase, minority teens, welfare mothers, and other low-skilled adults are displaced from the workforce by middle-class teenagers who are lured to jobs by the higher…

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  The Crippling Flaws in the New Jersey Fast Food Study

  April 1996

  Economists have long believed that raising the minimum wage results in fewer entry-level employment opportunities and displaces the least skilled from the job market. In recent months, proponents of a higher minimum wage have returned to one study which they claim shows the opposite — that higher minimum wages do not reduce, and may even increase, employment. The New Jersey fast food study, conducted by…

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  The Impact of the Federal Unemployment Insurance Tax Ceiling

  October 1995

  As Drs. Daniel Hamermesh and David Scoones point out in their paper, the steady erosion in the share of wages subject to taxation to fund the unemployment insurance (UI) system as led to an increased burden on low-skilled, and therefore low wage, workers: today only 1/3 of all wages are taxed to fund the UI system. Although the unemployment insurance system is nominally structured to…

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  Effects of Minimum Wages on Teenage Employment, Enrollment and Idleness

  August 1995

  To assess the desirability of higher minimum wages we typically focus on aggregate employment effects — how much a particular increase would lower overall employment. The current views on this question range from no job loss (according to the Clinton Administration) to a loss perhaps as high as 3 percent for teens (the workers most affected by the minimum wage) for every 10 percent increase…

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  Youth Employment in the Hospitality Sector

  June 1995

  It is no secret that the hospitality industry (restaurants and hotels) provides valuable opportunities to inexperienced workers, especially those seeking additional formal education. More than one in every five “first paid jobs” is in the hospitality sector. More than 40% of all youth employed in the 1980s had held at least one job in the hospitality industry. In the present study, Bradley Schiller of American…

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  The Consequences of Indexing the Minimum Wage to Average Wages in the U.S. Economy

  May 1995

  Two consistent themes have echoed throughout the current debate over the future of the minimum wage: minimum-wage workers today have been left behind by the overall growth in wages; and, mandated wage increases are desirable because most minimum wage workers are adults and have families to support. Both of these assertions are based on simplistic views of the workforce. Neither stands up to close scrutiny,…