With great fanfare, Minneapolis and Saint Paul raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour.
And now, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve says the policy has done…well, exactly what every conservative said it would do:
Pay is up 1% among those with jobs – but 2% fewer are employed as a direct result of the policies, and that’s just scratching the surface (emphasis added):
Many economists have reached similar conclusions about minimum wage increases in the past. Still, the size of the impacts the researchers measured — by comparing Minneapolis and St. Paul to data culled from other Minnesota cities from 2017 through 2021 — were eye-popping, especially in low-wage industries.
Take Minneapolis’ retail sector, for example: The minimum wage increase led to 28% fewer retail jobs than researchers would’ve expected from a similar city during the same five-year period. By this comparison, Minneapolis also saw a 20% drop in hours worked and a 13% dip in aggregate worker earnings.
Across St. Paul’s restaurant industry, the city’s 2018 minimum wage hike was responsible for drying up nearly one-third of available jobs, the study found. In “limited-service” (fast food) restaurants, both hours and earnings fell by more than half after the increase took effect.
“Good, they’re mostly terrible jobs anyway” say the white progressives from the non-profit/government/industrial complex. They re literally spinning this as good news – or excuses for more programs.
It’s possible that Big Left isn’t pushing these minimum wages as a way to gut opportunity for entry level workers. But if it were, I’m at a loss for what they’d do differently.
Similarly, any union would rather have one man working for a Fair Wage while 99 sit on the bench in the union hall, then have 100 men working for a dollar an hour less. It’s always about the optics, never about the outcome. Because the people setting the policy don’t have to live under their own policy so they never suffer the consequences.
But I do find it rather strange that every restaurant has Help Wanted signs up and can’t find enough workers and even close early or on ‘some days’ due to lack of employees.
Good, they’re mostly terrible jobs anyway
It’s ironic to remember how much I liked some of the worst (and low-paying) jobs I ever had. For example, I was a pot-washer at an American plan resort out in New Jersey for a couple of summers. Like an idiot, I drank away most of my wages which were supposed to be used when I went back to college – in my defense, the first summer was the year that so many states went insane and let 18 year-olds drink – turned out I had a real knack for drinking.
Anyway, up before dawn, down to the kitchen with crazy cooks (is there any other kind?), taking care of business. Emptying grease catches into a 50 gallon drum for pick-up later and killing the maggots. Because I was the only one in the kitchen who could drive a stick, I got the truck jobs like taking all uneaten food to feed the pigs down a minimum maintenance road in the woods so the owners could declare the resort to be a farm.
There’s way more stories to tell… shame that so many kids will be prevented from having a bunch of shitty jobs upon which to build a career.
… oh, yeah, and don’t get me started on being a “reserve mailman” in Denmark during my college years there. That was an awesome job too.
“I got the truck jobs like taking all uneaten food to feed the pigs down a minimum maintenance road in the woods…”
jdm, when I was a kid, we used to feed the pigs excess corn masa from a tortilla factory in Oakland. It was free.
Next year, I’ll be feeding them rotten peaches and corn stubble. Pigs are the easiest and cheapest food to raise… little fuckers will eat anything. Even stray leftists. 😄
Anyone that reports for work in the Twin Cities deserves battle pay. Evidently, the staff at Andy and Franks pizza in Dinkytown have been enduring beat downs on the regular.
I think that I shared this before, but when I was a sophomore in high school, my cousin got me a summer job for two months working for Green Giant in Glencoe, MN. I was on a cleaning crew of four. Our job was to blast the pea combines, then shovel the sludge into a honey wagon. Three local farmers that raised hogs, each had one there. We didn’t get started sometimes until 9:00 p.m. but needed to be done by midnight when the farmers showed up to pick them up. To this day, I can’t stand the smell of peas, which sucks, because my wife’s side loves them.
Another unguided ballistic missile hits a random target. Note the race of the negligent judges who cut him loose when he should have served five years for a gun law violation. Both white, upper middle class white people, both appointed by the DFL:
https://bit.ly/3LPdWtG
Democrats are not serious about stopping gun crime. Not in the cities, not in the states, not in the federal government.
Learn to code!
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“But I do find it rather strange that every restaurant has Help Wanted signs up and can’t find enough workers and even close early or on ‘some days’ due to lack of employees.”
But that follows as well. Reducing the number of employees means that to provide the same level of productivity, each remaining employee has to produce more in order to make up for the fewer numbers working at a time.
Low skilled labor jobs are already pretty arduous so adding to the workload of already overworked employees is going to make it difficult to find people willing to work like dogs, even at the higher pay scales.
Especially when, even at the higher pay, potential employees can still get more money from government programs than employment.
MMP, the scum they let out on the streets are their brownshirts, their SA. Then arrest anyone who defends themselves, and pretty soon it is total chaos, time for martial law.