Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

Upside of Inequality Unintended Consequences
  • “Unintended Consequences represents the most cogent and persuasive analysis of the Financial Crisis to date.” - Andrei Shleifer, 1999 John Bates Clark Medal Winner

The New York Times reports there are only 500,000 full-time minimum-wage jobs—the same number the Congressional Budget Office expects a raise to $10.10 will destroy

In yesterday’s New York Times’ Economix blog Bruce Bartlett reports on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that of the people earning the minimum wage, “about half were young people and about two-thirds worked only part time. Just half a million people worked full time at a minimum-wage job.”

This is worrisome because the CBO estimates that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would destroy 500,000 jobs. Even worse, because of substitution effects—where a low skilled worker earning $7.25 per hour is replaced by a higher skilled worker earning $10.10 an hour—the job loss for lower skilled workers would be larger than 500,000.