As inflation reaches historic highs, lawmakers and analysts are debating the causes, which include pandemic-related shocks as well as government-imposed limitations and swings in consumer demand.
One New York Times writer remarked this week on Twitter that recent media headlines about inflation are “all hype.” “Policies like the $15 minimum wage” are blamed by “wealthy people.” Instead of being justified in her concern over fast rising prices for everyday items, she claims the recent coverage is “hysteria,” implying that inflation benefits lower-income people since “inflation helps borrowers, and that’s what the fuss is about…not milk prices.”
Minimum wage increases in the past have been shown to induce price increases, which disproportionately affect lower to middle-income persons who spend a bigger amount of their wages on inflation-affected commodities like groceries.
The snowball effect between minimum wage hikes, such as the $15 per hour now in place in numerous states and localities and proposed at the federal level this year, and price increases is documented in a report by Heritage Foundation fellow James Sherk. A $15 federal minimum wage, for example, represents a 107 percent increase over the current federal minimum pay of $7.25 per hour. Employers must adjust their business models to accommodate for the increased labor expenditure when governments enforce substantial minimum wage increases. In many circumstances, this necessitates firms raising consumer pricing to compensate for the higher cost of providing their goods or services. Sherk claims that this hurts minimum wage workers and lower-income consumers the most, because the costs of the products they buy have climbed as well, lowering their newly boosted salaries’ purchasing power.
According to one analysis of the existing minimum wage research, which mostly contains data on price effects from the United States, a 10% rise in the minimum wage raises prices by up to 0.3 percent.
According to one of the studies evaluated by the American Enterprise Institute, the same price boost might produce price rises of up to 2.7 percent in the southern United States, where living costs and earnings are much lower. Recent study also suggests that increased minimum wages have a greater inflationary impact on employers of minimum wage earners. A research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the United States Department of Agriculture indicated that raising the minimum wage more than doubled the price increase effect in fast-food restaurants, and much higher in lower-wage areas.
In addition, a Stanford University economist looked at the impact of price hikes by income level and discovered that while “Minimum wage workers come from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, and raising the minimum wage has the greatest impact on the poorest 20% of households.
Minimum wages encourage firms to raise prices to cover some of the additional pay bill, according to this analysis of previous findings. However, this comes at a price employers must be careful not to raise prices too much, as this will generate price-sensitive client demand. Employers are unable to raise prices if they believe that doing so will reduce demand and result in decreased revenues, which will not be sufficient to fund increases in employee wages. Employers are obliged to adjust costs in other ways if this happens, such as lowering other employee benefits, reducing scheduled hours, or laying off staff entirely.
Sherk claims that the price hike effect of rising minimum wages is combined with large job loss effects, implying that minimum wage people are more likely to lose their jobs or have their hours decreased as their cost of living rises. As a result, he believes that increasing minimum wages is an unproductive approach to provide benefits to low-wage workers due to inflationary and job-killing impacts.
Does raising salaries lead to higher inflation?
Wage Increases: What Causes Inflation? Inflation is caused by wage increases because the cost of producing products and services rises as corporations pay their workers more. To compensate for the cost increase, businesses must increase the price of their goods and services in order to retain the same level of profitability.
What happens if the minimum wage is raised?
Since 2009, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has remained unchanged. Increasing it would increase most low-wage employees’ earnings and family income, pulling some families out of povertybut it would also cause other low-wage workers to lose their jobs, and their family income would fall.
The Budgetary Consequences of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 (S. 53), which CBO evaluated in The Budgetary Effects of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, allows users to study the effects of policies that would raise the federal minimum wage. Users can also build their own policy options to see how different ways to increasing the minimum wage would influence earnings, employment, family income, and poverty.
What are the drawbacks of increasing the minimum wage?
- Despite numerous attempts to raise the minimum wage, no bill has ever passed both chambers of Congress.
- Minimum wage supporters claim that reforms are needed to help salaries keep up with rising living costs, and that a higher minimum wage will raise millions of people out of poverty.
- Opponents of raising the minimum wage claim that increased salaries will have various negative consequences, including inflation, decreased company competitiveness, and job losses.
Inflation, what should the minimum salary be?
Consumer prices rose 5.3 percent in August compared to the previous year, causing some anxiety as the economy recovers from the pandemic. Food prices at home increased by 3%, while food prices away from home (i.e. restaurants) increased by 4.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest release this week. Rents and energy prices both increased by roughly 9%.
One point of worry for employers and employees in the United States is that activists frequently exploit inflation data to support their campaign for a $15 minimum wage, or even a higher salary of $23 per hour, despite the fact that study shows such steep rises will destroy millions of jobs.
Remember, if we kept up with inflation, the minimum wage would be $23/hr right now. $15 is a good middle ground. #RaiseTheWagehttps://t.co/44l6Rqln0F
Despite the fact that inflation has risen dramatically in the last year, the so-called “The Fight for $15” is still not based on a consumer price index. If the 2009 federal minimum wage increase to $7.25 per hour were indexed to climb with inflation, it would equal $9.22 today, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data up to August 2021.
If the minimum wage were to be adjusted to the level in 1990, it would be $7.17 now. No matter how you slice it, these data don’t even come close to, let alone support, the $23 hourly rate proposed by the union-backed One Fair Wage.
Indeed, the $15 minimum wage goal that several states and municipalities have already enacted has no precedence in history. An organizing director for the Service Employees International Union’s Fight for $15 campaign joked about the absence of genuine analysis informing their main policy goal at one meeting, saying: “We decided that $10 was too low and $20 was too much, so we settled on $15.”
Unfortunately, these draconian minimum wage targets, which lack economic justification, will wreak havoc on firms and employees as they try to recover from the pandemic. According to the impartial Congressional Budget Office, the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, which proposes a $15 minimum wage nationwide, may cost the country up to 2.7 million jobs. According to economists from Miami and Trinity Universities’ industry and state-level analyses, the hospitality and restaurant industries would bear the brunt of these effects. Increases above the $15 minimum wage would have an even bigger negative impact on employer costs, and could result in the loss of many more employment.
What if the minimum wage was increased to $15?
Legislators submitted the “Raise the Wage Act of 2021” in January 2021, with the goal of raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour by 2025. It would be the first hike in more than a decade, and the longest since 1938, if passed.
Many state and local governments have already established a $15 minimum wage, while the federal minimum wage has stayed unchanged. (In 2014, for example, Seattle mandated that employers gradually raise their minimum wage until it hits $15 per hour.) Seattle’s minimum wage will be $16.69 per hour in 2021.) Nonetheless, such a huge change at the federal level will undoubtedly be controversial and hotly disputed.
Advantages
Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour would help low-income people improve their overall level of life. These workers would be able to cover their monthly expenses more readily, such as rent, car payments, and other household costs. “Today, a full-time worker cannot afford a basic, two-bedroom apartment in any county in the United States,” said Representative Robert Scott, leader of the House Committee on Education and Labor. Senator Bernie Sanders has also stated that the minimum wage should be $15, as he feels that full-time workers should not be forced to live in poverty.
A second, less visible benefit of hiking the minimum wage has been proposed: improved staff morale. Not only will happier employees make for a more cohesive and effective workforce, but they may also increase customer satisfaction. Furthermore, if employees are happy with their jobs and compensation, they are less likely to leave, which saves the company money on hiring and training.
Proponents say that raising the minimum wage to $15 will assist women and minorities. A $15 minimum wage would improve the pay of 31% of African Americans and 26% of Latinos. Furthermore, a disproportionate number of minority workers live in one of the 21 states with a $7.25-per-hour minimum wage.
Disadvantages
Small firms, according to opponents of raising the minimum wage, would suffer as a result of such a significant increase. An rise in the federal minimum wage will dramatically increase small businesses’ operating costs and tighten profits, just as they are beginning to recover from the international Covid-19 outbreak.
Raising the minimum wage to $15 would also boost daycare expenditures by 21% on average in the United States. In 2019, the average hourly wage for an early childcare worker in the United States was $11.65. As a result, a nationally enforced $15 minimum wage would nearly triple the cost of labor for childcare providers.
Advocates on both sides will continue to cite several reasons in favor of their viewpoints as the federal minimum wage debate continues to elicit passionate opinions. Those who oppose a minimum wage claim that market forces should be in charge. If there is a lot of competition for talented personnel, a business may have little choice but to raise salaries to keep staff. Employers and employees should be aware of both sides of the issue and prepare for a change in the federal minimum wage law that is almost certain to occur.
(This article was greatly aided by Logan Adams, a spring clerk in our Dallas office.)
What is the impact of the minimum wage on many workers?
Voluntary trades are the foundation of markets. Figure 10.6 “Labor Market with a Minimum Pay” shows that sellers (labor suppliers) want to sell 50,000 hours of labor to the market at the specified minimum wagethat is, 250 more persons want a 40-hour-a-week job when the wage rises from $4 to $5. Firms, on the other hand, want to buy only 32,000 hours of labor and hire 200 fewer people (8,000 fewer hours). No one can compel businesses to hire workers in a market where trade is voluntary. As a result, how much corporations want to buy, not how much workers want to sell, will decide the equilibrium quantity of labor transacted in the market.
We can now address the chapter’s first motivating question: what is the impact of adopting a minimum wage? When the government sets a minimum wage, two things happen:
- The number of workers hired in the market is decreasing. The number of unskilled workers employed falls from 1,000 to 800 in our scenario. As a result, while those who have jobs earn a greater income, some people have lost their work. The number of people employed has reduced.
- There are more people who wish to work than there are jobs available at the government-imposed salary. As a result, the minimum wage has resulted in joblessness. Because 1,250 people want employment at $5 an hour but only 800 are available, 450 people are unemployed; they want a job paying the prevailing wage but can’t find one.
Even though employment declined by only 200 workers, there are now 450 unemployed workers. The difference is due to the fact that a greater income encourages more people to work than before. In this scenario, a higher wage means 250 more people are interested in working.
In this explanation, we’ve assumed that everyone works 40 hours a week, in which case the number of persons employed must drop by 200. Another scenario is that everyone who wants a job can get one, but the amount of hours spent per person declines. Each worker would work 25.6 hours per week since there are 32,000 hours of work demanded and 1,250 persons looking for work. In this case, we refer to the position as underemployment rather than unemployed. Another scenario is that when the minimum wage is implemented, the number of persons employed remains the same (1,000), but those people are only allowed to work 32 hours per week. We have both underemployment (of the formerly employed) and unemployment in this scenario (of the extra workers who want a job at the higher wage). In real-life settings, both unemployment and underemployment are possible.
What impact does a higher minimum wage have on businesses?
“Agile production,” in which companies conceive, set up, and produce a variety of items quickly, is one successful high-road method in manufacturing. A fixed division of labor is not realistic because the product mix changes frequently. This strategy is especially effective, as Helper and Martins show, when companies also perform preventive maintenance (so machines are ready when needed), have employees participate in quality circles (to quickly debug new products and processes), and have a higher percentage of sales from products designed by the company (to generate a steady stream of products that need such debugging).
To summarize, many high-road businesses flourish while paying higher wages than their competitors because their highly talented employees help them achieve high rates of innovation and quality, as well as the ability to respond quickly to unforeseen events. As a result of the great productivity, these businesses are able to pay high wages while still making acceptable profits.
The literature on the high road implies that businesses pay greater wages than their competitors. Increases in the legal minimum wage are a slightly different scenario, but they have many of the same consequences. A higher minimum wage makes it simpler to implement high-road tactics since a company with only local competition doesn’t have to worry about being undercut by competitors that pay less. Because higher salaries minimize turnover, a minimum wage rise can improve the productivity of a company’s employees. Higher minimum wages, in fact, are associated with more stable and experienced workforces, according to empirical research. (This is because a higher minimum wage compresses the income distribution from below, lowering the gains that a worker can expect from job searching for someone earning close to the new minimum wage.) Employees who can focus more on work and are less distracted by the cognitive demands of poverty, such as whether their car will break down before they can afford to fix it, can help businesses.
Firms that want to take the high road, on the other hand, typically find it difficult to switch from their existing high-turnover, low-productivity strategy very away. As previously stated, implementing a high-road strategy necessitates not just changes in labor practices, but also changes in marketing, product development, and information technology in order to take advantage of the new policies’ higher-skilled (but also higher-cost) labor. The need to implement complementary changes all at once, as well as the need to vary the recipe when employers are confronted with different contexts that indicate slightly different payoffs for training investments, task richness, schedule stability, and complex feedback from customer demand all add to the difficulty.
As a result, improving management processes and developing and utilizing new technology have a lot in common. Management practices, like technology, are a fundamental predictor of productivity; they are complex and difficult to acquire, and their adoption has numerous societal consequences. These societal benefits include both better jobs for workers (better career paths and richer duties) and better customer service in the case of high-road practices.
Some businesses are able to figure out these new recipes, while others are having difficulty. Restaurants with bad Yelp ratings, for example, responded to a minimum wage rise by raising prices and abandoning the business, according to Luca and Luca. Firms with 5-star ratings, on the other hand, raised prices substantially less and saw no rise in the likelihood of leaving.
The federal government should assist in the development and dissemination of these high-road practices, as they provide both social and private benefits. In the field of manufacturing, the United States has a few emerging institutions. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership does a great job of disseminating management practices such as lean production and effective new product development to small businesses, but it does not develop new techniques and views its members as business owners rather than employees. Manufacturing USA institutes generate new technologies and assist in their passage from lab to marketbut these are standard definitions of technology (e.g., new equipment and materials), not new organizational structures.
The federal government might subsidize the development and implementation of high-road management methods through a consortium of colleges or a pilot project focused on manufacturing that could be developed in the Manufacturing USA network to build on these institutions. The Manufacturing Extension Partnership could engage with a new institute or consortium dedicated to managing a sustainable manufacturing ecosystem. The institute might create and disseminate strategies for managing high-road labor practices, forming collaborative supplier connections, and training workers to participate in innovation dialogues. An organization or consortium like this would be especially useful in assisting small businesses in adjusting to growing worker power.
Local models in the service sector include the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, the Los Angeles Hospitality Training Academy, and initiatives run by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington state to improve the abilities (and pay) of home health aides. A similar new institution might aid in the proliferation of these concepts across the country and into other industries.
Minimum wage hikes have proven that some struggling businesses are replaced by businesses that are better positioned to thrive under higher wage rules, as well as that workers are reallocated to more productive businesses. Programs like the ones outlined above, on the other hand, might accomplish similar productivity gains more generally and with less interruption to workers and business owners’ lives.
The extensive economic study on the effects of the minimum wage reveals that the benefits to employees and the economy significantly outweigh the costs of raising the federal minimum wage. Increasing these benefits even more would be to assist enterprises in adapting by implementing high-road management practices.
Susan Helper is the Carlton Professor of Economics at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. She is a member of the EPI board of directors and the former Chief Economist of the United States Department of Commerce.
What causes price increases?
- Inflation is the rate at which the price of goods and services in a given economy rises.
- Inflation occurs when prices rise as manufacturing expenses, such as raw materials and wages, rise.
- Inflation can result from an increase in demand for products and services, as people are ready to pay more for them.
- Some businesses benefit from inflation if they are able to charge higher prices for their products as a result of increased demand.
Is the United Kingdom’s minimum wage linked to inflation?
Since their inception in the United Kingdom, the national minimum and living wages have risen every year. However, this does not imply that they have kept up with rising living costs.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced an increase in the national living and minimum wages in his Autumn Budget, declaring that the higher rates “guarantee we’re making work pay and maintains us on track to reach our commitment to abolish low pay by the end of this Parliament.”
Every country in the globe has its own system for determining the minimum wage, as well as the amounts that should be paid to different age groups.
Some countries have a minimum pay per hour, whereas others have a minimum wage per working day, week, or month. Many countries still do not have any kind of minimum wage at all.
In general, the national minimum wage in this country rises by roughly 4% per year, in accordance with inflation rates. If the minimum wage does not keep pace with inflation, people will grow poorer despite earning the same amount of money.
Naturally, different countries have varying living costs, inflation rates, and average wages. But, in the broader scheme of things, how does the United Kingdom fare? And who has the world’s highest minimum wage?
Is everyone getting a raise in 2022 when the minimum wage rises?
An economy that works for everyone is necessary for progress and the well-being of working families.
President Biden signed the Minimum Wage Executive Order on April 27, 2021, and the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued the implementing regulations, ensuring that workers on federal contracts are paid a fair wage and demonstrating that the government can lead by example.
We’re boosting the minimum pay for government contract workers to $15.00 per hour beginning January 30, 2022. This rise, which will effect more than 300,000 workers, comes at a time when the federal government is making historic investments in our nation’s infrastructure, which will result in the creation of millions of new jobs in construction and associated industries.
While construction employees will be covered by the $15 minimum wage, workers in child care, health care, and building and other services on government contracts will also be covered. Women make up around 54% of those affected by the minimum wage rise, while workers of color make up roughly 25%. Workers who benefit from our final minimum wage rule will receive an average annual rise of $5,228.
Raising the minimum wage strengthens families’ financial security, decreases poverty, and moves the country closer to reversing decades of income inequality. Better government services, increased morale and productivity, and fewer turnover and absenteeism are all possible additional benefits.
The rule also protects workers on government contracts, in addition to raising the minimum wage:
- Raising the minimum pay for disabled workers who would otherwise earn less than the minimum wage.
- Starting Jan. 1, 2023, federal contract workers who get tips will be paid at least 85 percent of the entire minimum wage in cash, and 100 percent starting Jan. 1, 2024.
- Workers who provide recreational activities on public lands should have their minimum wage rights restored.
As of January 30, 2021, these modifications will apply to most new contracts, including renewals and extensions. They apply to federal contract workers in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Outer Continental Shelf lands as defined in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Wake Island, and Johnston Island, as well as the District of Columbia.
As a government employee, I witness firsthand how the labor of federal contract workers keeps the government functioning and ensures that the American people have access to critical services and resources. Executive Order 14026, which I am happy to sign, will help hundreds of thousands of hardworking people, their families, and our communities.
Would you like to understand more about this rule and what it implications for businesses? On the 26th and 27th of January, register for one of our federal contractor seminars.