On CNN.com, Christine Ownes claims that raising the minimum wage will create jobs. Of course, she doesn’t explain how coercively imposing additional costs on businesses will lead to job creation, because no explanation is possible. The fact is, the minimum wage kills jobs on a massive scale.
One example of the job-destroying nature of minimum wage laws occurred in July 2009 when the minimum wage was increased from $6.55 to $7.25. A month before the increase, economist David Neumark wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “The best estimates from studies since the early 1990s suggest that the 11% minimum wage increase scheduled for this summer will lead to the loss of an additional 300,000 jobs among teens and young adults.” Nine months later, another economist, Casey B. Mulligan, wrote in The New York Times, that “part-time employment would have been about 500,000 greater in the last couple of months of the year if it hadn’t been for that last increase in the federal minimum [wage].”
By making it illegal to pay a wage below the minimum, minimum wage laws price many workers—particularly those with few job skills and less education—out of the labor market. Simply because Congress mandates a particular wage as a legal minimum does not miraculously endow workers with the skills that businesses need. If this were the case, then why doesn’t Congress mandate a minimum wage of one hundred dollars per hour and legislate the nation into prosperity?