US study shows minimum-wage rises boosts retail employment
According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a research group in Albany, the state’s minimum-wage increases have helped small businesses.
The institute’s study, an update of a 2004 report with similar findings, again focused primarily on the retail industry, which the researchers considered most likely to employ low-wage workers.
The latest study found that between 2004 and 2005, the year covering the first of the three minimum-wage hikes, retail industry employment in the state rose 1.3 percent, compared with 0.8 percent for nonfarm job growth overall. Employment also rose in other higher-wage states, the study found.
Researchers also concluded that in the same period the work hours for some of the most unskilled workers didn’t drop, but instead increased from a mean of 30.7 hours a week to 31.3.
Small businesses may have benefited indirectly from the wage hikes, the researchers said.
