Tuesday, November 19, 2013

In Western Europe, the Average Jobless Rate is Twice as High in Countries with a Minimum Wage vs. Those with No Minimum


(Via Mark Perry)

9 comments:

  1. Could be correlation between socialist policies in general and the state of economy.

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  2. I'm no fan of minimum wage but I'm not quite sure this chart means anything. Spain and Greece are skewering the numbers big time and their problems lie much deeper than minimum wage laws.

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  3. Newsflash! Mandated increases in labor costs result in less employment. Duh.

    If something as basic as wage controls leading to more unemployment is still being debated, how are we going to get people to understand the more complicated stuff?

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  4. you shouldn't promote BS empiricism like this even if it plays in our favour on this issue

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  5. I am shocked that all those countries have no mandated minimum wage. Are you sure of the veracity of that?

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  6. Averaging averages? C'mon.

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  7. While of course the majority of us that visit this site know that minimum wage is nothing more than an unemployment mandate on UNSKILLED workers because the constraints must be binding. I agree with Mike that the chart means very little without some sort of qualification.

    The Krugman's of the world can just point to Luxembourg and say "see they have a minimum wage of $14 and have relatively low unemployment". This of course misses the point that in order for this to be true, most of the jobs in Luxembourg already pay more than the minimum wage; therefore, because the constraint is mostly non-binding, it's essentially meaningless.

    Greece and Spain on the other hand are enumerated with low skilled workers thus causing massive structural unemployment.

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  8. In Switzerland they may not have a minimum wage but they have a $2,800/month 'basic income for adults'. So using a chart like the one above to push a policy of non-government interference is quite lacking.

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/switzerland-to-vote-on--2-800-monthly-%E2%80%98basic-income%E2%80%99-minimum-for-adults-181937885.html

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  9. The odd thing is if you look at the countries with a minimum wage, the higher the minimum wage, the lower the unemployment rate.

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