As of the end of 2021, there are 2 million workers at or below minimum wage. Crucially, this number includes those in the restaurant profession that are paid “wages” of $2 per hour but also receive tips. Notably, the number and total percentage of ALL workers today who are at or below minimum wage are at the lowest levels since 1979.
As noted, you will find most of those workers in the fast-food industry.
As the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted: “Minimum-wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented nearly one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up 44 percent of those paid the federal minimum wage or less.”
The Federal Minimum wage is a political “hot potato” that garners attention but has little impact on the economy’s overall health.
“So what? People working at restaurants need to make a ‘living wage.’”
While it’s an emotionally charged argument, the minimum wage isn’t meant to be a living standard.
Minimum wage jobs are starter positions to allow businesses to train, evaluate, and grow valuable employees.
If the employee performs, wages increase along with additional duties.
If not, they either remain where they are or get replaced.
Critically, minimum wage jobs weren’t meant to be permanent positions or to provide a “living wage.” If an individual remains stuck at the minimum wage, it may have more to do with the worker than the employer.
Nonetheless, there’s a misplaced outcry for hiking the minimum wage to $15 per hour or, in California’s case, $22 per hour. The problem, of course, is the economic impact on those receiving those pay increases.
No Free Lunch
Okay, let’s hike the minimum wage to $15 per hour. That doesn’t sound like that big of a deal.However, assume the employee works full-time, earning $15 per hour.
$15 per hour multiplied by 40 hours per week equals $600 per week.
$600 per week multiplied by 4.3 weeks in a month equals $2,580 per month.
$2,580 per month multiplied by 12 months equals $30,960 per year.
Given that most minimum-wage jobs are in the fast-food industry, what happens to the price of hamburgers when companies must pay $30,000 per year for “hamburger flippers?”
McDonald’s and Walmart can give you a clue.
“KeKe Mendez recorded herself driving to a McDonald’s drive-thru. When she approached the window, there wasn’t an employee in sight. Instead, she was met with an automated machine handling her order.
“The machine placed the bag down and pushed it on a conveyor belt to the window.”
After Walmart and Target announced higher minimum wages, layoffs occurred and cashiers got replaced with self-checkout counters. Restaurants added surcharges to help cover the costs of higher wages, a “tax” on consumers, and chains such as Mcdonald’s and Panera Bread replaced cashiers with apps and ordering kiosks.
Such actions shouldn’t be surprising, as labor costs are the highest expense to any business. It isn’t just the actual wages but also payroll taxes, benefits, paid vacation, health care, and so forth. Employees aren’t cheap, and that cost must get covered by the goods or services sold. Therefore, if the consumer refuses to pay more, the costs must become offset elsewhere.
More importantly, just as we found out with sending stimulus payments to households, once businesses realize there’s more money available, the cost of services will increase.
In other words, there’s no such thing as a “free lunch,” as increasing the minimum wage will lead to an increase (inflation) in everything else, essentially wiping out the benefit of the wage increase.
The Wage Spiral
How can hiking the minimum wage foster a wage spiral?Let’s look at an example. A parcel carrier job that currently pays $15 per hour has the following work requirements:
Lifting boxes of up to 150 lbs.
Loading and unloading trucks in a warehouse that can be freezing or sweltering.
Driving a large truck anywhere from 10 to 150 miles per day, customer interaction, and route planning.
What would be the consequences of raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour for this worker? There are two possible outcomes:
1. Instead of lifting parcels of up to 150 lbs per day, they quit for a much easier job for the same pay.
2. Demands a pay raise (which, if they don’t get the raise, they quit to take a much easier job).
The parcel carrier service acquiesces and raises their pay to $20 per hour. However, now the managers making $20 per hour want a raise, and so forth. It’s the same effect as throwing a rock into a pond. Yes, the rock (in this case, the number of minimum-wage workers) may be small, but the “ripple effect” to the pond’s edges becomes substantial.
As wages increase at the bottom, there’s a trickle-up effect on all workers. Importantly, those accelerating wage costs ultimately must pass on to consumers, otherwise known as inflation. That cycle of rising wages and prices is the “wage-price spiral.” The Fed already got a taste of the problem with the influx of stimulus into the economy, which led to surging demand when employees were scarce.
Concern over the wage-price spiral is also why the Fed remains committed to hiking interest rates to slow economic demand (which, in turn, will lower wages as unemployment increases) to reduce inflationary pressures.
The Consequences
The consequences of mandated minimum wage increases are problematic due to the impact they can have on overall wages, costs, and corporate responses. The Manhattan Institute previously concluded: “By eliminating jobs and/or reducing employment growth, economists have long understood that adoption of a higher minimum wage can harm the very poor who are intended to be helped. Nonetheless, a political drumbeat of proposals—including from the White House—now calls for an increase in the $7.25 minimum wage to levels as high as $15 per hour.”But this groundbreaking paper by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and Ben Gitis, director of labor market policy at the American Action Forum, comes to a strikingly different conclusion: “Not only would overall employment growth be lower as a result of a higher minimum wage, but much of the increase in income that would result for those fortunate enough to have jobs would go to relatively higher-income households—not to those households in poverty in whose name the campaign for a higher minimum wage is being waged.”
This is just common sense logic, but it also finds support from the CBO report.
Reductions in employment would initially be concentrated at firms where higher prices quickly reduce sales. Over a longer period, however, more firms would replace low-wage workers with higher-wage workers, machines, and other substitutes.
A higher minimum wage shifts income from higher-wage consumers and business owners to low-wage workers. Because low-wage workers tend to spend a larger fraction of their earnings, some firms see increased demand for their goods and services, which boosts the employment of low-wage workers and higher-wage workers alike.
A decrease in low-wage workers reduces the productivity of machines, buildings, and other capital goods.
Although some businesses use more capital goods if labor is more expensive, that reduced productivity discourages other businesses from constructing new buildings and buying new machines. That reduction in capital reduces low-wage workers’ productivity, which leads to further reductions in their employment.
The critical point here is that the unintended consequences of a minimum wage hike in a weak economic environment aren’t inconsequential. Given that businesses will fight to maintain profitability, hiking the minimum wage, given the subsequent “trickle-up” effect, will lead to further automation and the “off-shoring” of jobs to reduce rising employment costs.
The Fed is keenly aware of the wage-price spiral and understands that increasing borrowing costs will eventually force wages to come down as the economy and inflation decline.
Unfortunately, those that just got the minimum wage increase may see their jobs soon replaced by a more cost-effective method.
