Minimum Wage Impact

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Today, Minimum wage is an important labor policy and it affects the nation's economy and people's welfare. Minimum wage aims to help not only those who are facing extreme poverty, but also human dignity. In addition, minimum wage policy affects the decisions of producers and consumers and affects the whole economy.
Supporters of this policy think that it increases the standard of living and reduces poverty. They also believe that it will ensure equality among workers by giving them a fair wage without discrimination by gender or race. For the whole economy, supporters believe that minimum wage spur consumption, which mean putting more money into the economy by allowing workers to spend more. The Council of Economic Advisers expected that more …show more content…

There are different findings and opinions about raising minimum wage effects on the employment. Some studies found that there is a little or no response from the employers on raising the minimum wage, because employers can shift this increase to the consumer by increasing prices. In 1994, after an increase in the minimum wage in New Jersey, David Card and Alan Krueger made a famous study comparing the fast food employment in New Jersey (where the minimum wage was raised) and Pennsylvania (where the minimum wage was constant) after and before the rise, and they didn’t find a significant effect on employment. Another study in 2010 looked at U.S. restaurant employment in 288 different counties with different minimum wage rates. The study found that minimum wage doesn’t reduce …show more content…

government imposed a new federal minimum wage in 2007 on American Samoa and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). While this increase had good intentions—a reply to the islanders' wages being lower than that of their mainland counterparts—the results were shocking. As indicated by another report from the United States General Accountability Office (GAO), the 19 percent decrease in employment in the workforce that American Samoa has encountered since 2008 was in vast part the consequence of imposing minimum hourly wages across different industries. The islands’ essential industry is tuna fish canning, with major employers Chicken of the Sea (Seafood company) shutting and Starkist (Tuna company) reporting enormous layoffs. In 2008 the number of workers in the canneries was somewhat more than 19,000 yet has following tumbled to