Minimum Wage Good Or Bad Essay

Increased Minimum Wage; Good or Bad?

The federal minimum wage has been in effect since The Great Depression. Recently, it has become a highly controversial issue. Should it be raised or not? Some ask if it should exist at all. And, the biggest question of all, how does the minimum wage affect the profitability of a business? Increasing the minimum wage causes many issues regarding the economy and the business industry. Increasing the minimum wage would force businesses to lay off employees and raise unemployment levels. The Congressional Budget Office projected that a minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $10.10 would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs. In a survey of 1,213 businesses and human resources professionals, 38% of employers who currently

“A higher minimum wage represents a particular challenge for restaurants, which depend heavily on hourly workers,” William Fahy, vice president and senior credit officer for Moody’s, said in a statement. The increased cost of labor will likely cause higher costs to customers, which as Fahy noted, would be bad for restaurants trying to maintain profits. (Wolf, “Restaurants Will Suffer..”) Also, raising the minimum wage can cause small local businesses to shut down because of the lack of money available to pay the

On the other hand, increasing the minimum to that amount two years ago might have cost the economy about 500,000 jobs, or 0.3 percent of the workforce, by 2016, the CBO found. California's move to increase its minimum wage to $15 by 2022 say it could cost the state as many as 700,000 jobs, including in the manufacturing sector, where 600,000 workers earn less than the new state minimum. (Quittner, “What A Minimum Wage