Minimum wage laws hurt the most unskilled and least experienced workers in society. They cut off the lower rungs of the ladder to that it becomes far more difficult to enter the workforce without substantial experience. After all, how many employers are willing to take the risk of hiring a workers at 8 dollars an hour when that workers has no references and no experience? Some would. But many more would be willing to do it for 5 dollars per hour.
In practice, fewer than 3 percent of workers earn the minimum wage because as soon as most workers prove they can learn on the job and show up for work, they move above the minimum wage. But, it's that crucial opportunity to get the foot in the door and get a little experience that is hurt by minimum wage laws. Given that 97% of workers are already working above the minimum wage, this illustrates the key importance of allowing wages to be flexible for those not already in the 97%.
Entry into that 97% of workers making above-minimum wage is only hurt by minimum wages because the mandate erases opportunities for workers to prove themselves, even when they have zero experience. Thus, those who are the least promising prospects simply have no chance of getting their foot in the door because they are perceived as being too much of a risk when the employer must pay a minimum wage far above the worker's apparent value.
Were wages more flexible, brining on an unskilled workers would be a far less risky proposition for employers.
As a result of the minimum wage, however, unemployment rises among the least skilled, and income inequality grows.
As we learn in Politico this week, however, supporters of the minimum wage have a ready scapegoat for the minimum wage's failure to bring the most vulnerable workers up to higher wage levels. They'll blame a lack of enforcement by government agencies:
This failure to enforce both the minimum hourly wage — $7.25 under federal law — and rules requiring higher pay for overtime distorts the economy, giving advantages to employers who break the law. It allows long-term patterns of abuse to take root in certain service industries, especially restaurants, landscaping and cleaning. Advocates for lowest-wage workers describe families facing eviction and experiencing hunger for lack of money that’s owed them. And, nationally, the failure to enforce wage laws exacerbates a level of income inequality that, by many measures, is higher than it’s been for the past century.
“Low-income workers are already in this fragile balance,” said Victor Narro of the UCLA Labor Center. “One paycheck of not being able to get the wages they’re owed can cause them to lose everything.”
Minimum wage laws increase income inequality by discriminating most against those "in the fragile balance," but when we fail to see that the least skilled workers are getting work, we will just blame enforcement instead.
This, it seems, is a variationon the "socialism has never been tried!" argument, in which if we just do socialism "harder," this time it will work. This appears to be the mentality in Venezuela right now. When we find that minimum wages don't actually put unskilled workers on the path toward high wages, we'll say "the minimum wage has never truly been tried" and we'll fix it by ramping up enforcement.
In truth, these loophole through which many of these employers - mostly small businesses and other low-capital operations - are passing, are all that's keeping these workers employed at all. If forced to compete with workers at more reliable and highly capitalized operation, they may very well find themselves completely unemployed. Moreover, the small businesses that we're told are cruelly withholding wages are often not paying wages because they're missing payroll due to low revenues. Properly enforcing the laws will just drive these companies out of business. We might say "serves them right" when that happens, but the outcome will also be that all the workers lose their jobs.
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