In his blog last week, University of Michigan economist and AEI scholar, Mark Perry, noted that “U.S. cities that have raised their minimum wage to $10 an hour or more in 2015 have seen…job gains fall to multiyear lows at restaurants, hotels and other leisure and hospitality venues.”
According to Perry, while the data isn’t “reliable enough to amount to…proof,” Washington D.C. for example, raised its minimum wage to $10.50, which is higher than the D.C. suburbs. This “provides a natural experiment to test for the employment effects of D.C.’s minimum wage law.… Suburban restaurants last year increased staffing levels by nearly 5,000 new positions, employment at the District’s restaurants contracted by more than 200 jobs.” While Perry admits “population growth could affect restaurant jobs in D.C. vs. the suburbs,” he notes that according to the “2015 United Van Lines Migration report…in 2015, D.C. was a ‘High Inbound’ area.”
Read Mark Perry’s full post here.