Yes according to classical economics it'd result in a decrease in demand. But the reality is that these shops need the workers regardless. Moreover with a minimum wage people have more disposable income to spend at these shops, which can sometimes create more jobs than the increased salary destroyed.
Most studies that have been done on minimum wage found no correlation to unemployment rate. The economics you learned in high school can rarely be applied perfectly to reality. There are plenty of countries with minimum wages with no significantly different unemployment rates in the service industries.
Pretty much all changes in minimum wages are small.
This makes it very hard to measure the effect with any precision. You have to remember that wages are not 100% of the compensation for employees. So if MW increases from $10 to $10:50, fringe benefits may be cut from $2 to $1:50, and you end up with no measurable effect.
> But the reality is that these shops need the workers regardless.
If their expenses become higher than their earnings, the shops will close. Maybe that at least is an economic fact we can agree on?
Then why not implement it that way? Make the minimum wage small and bump it up a bit ahead of inflation every year. If things go south (this hasn't happened in any other country that has done it) it can always be reversed.
For what it's worth, here in Australia there's only around 10% less McDonald's stores per capita to the US, despite a $20 minimum wage. All these workers can afford to eat and live in some of the most expensive cities in the world and the country isn't collapsing under unemployment.
You might miss my point. I'm saying MW does hurt low skilled workers quite a lot, but adjusting it for inflation every few years doesn't make it worse.
If I was emperor, abolishing MW would be my first and most obvious reform to help the poor.
> All these workers can afford to eat and live...
But the problem is the people who can't get work because on MW!
>I'm saying MW does hurt low skilled workers quite a lot
Citation needed. In fact, I did a quick Google search and found out that several US cities/states have increased minimum wage this year and they've seen NO significant job losses. In fact, in some cases these states have seen more growth in low-income jobs than states with lower minimum wages.
Minimum wage takes money out of the pockets of the rich and puts it in the pockets of the poor. Half the time the rich people would have spent this money on luxury goods instead of spending this money on everyday things anyway. As such, in many cases you end up seeing increases (or at least no impact) in the numbers of low wage jobs because of the increase in demand of the products of said workers.
> If their expenses become higher than their earnings, the shops will close. Maybe that at least is an economic fact we can agree on?
Or they could raise their prices. That’s what normally happens in my experience when a small business faces an unavoidable and significant increase in one of its input costs.
Most studies that have been done on minimum wage found no correlation to unemployment rate. The economics you learned in high school can rarely be applied perfectly to reality. There are plenty of countries with minimum wages with no significantly different unemployment rates in the service industries.