From the Record:
Employers brace for ‘pay raise’
When the state’s minimum wage rose from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 a year ago, employers shrugged it off, because most were already paying workers more than $6 an hour.
But when the wage rises again Sunday, to $7.15 an hour, more employers and workers will feel the impact.
“About 200,000 people will get a pay raise,” said David Socolow, commissioner of the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
Employers facing higher payroll costs may cut back on hiring or trim their workers’ benefits, employer groups say.
The hardest hit employers will be small companies with thin profit margins, especially in the tourism industry, which relies on seasonal labor, said John Rogers, vice president for human resource issues at the New Jersey Business and Industry Association.
…
John Galandak, president of the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey, said the new wage law won’t help New Jersey’s image among companies deciding where to locate or expand their operations.“It’s part of a larger picture,” Galandak said. “New Jersey has this reputation for being less business-friendly. Lots of people feel that the government shouldn’t be involved in legislating wages; let employees and employers negotiate that.”
…
When New Jersey’s minimum wage increase was being debated, some employers argued that a higher minimum would hurt New Jersey’s efforts to compete with neighboring states for business.But New York’s minimum, now $6.75, is scheduled to rise to $7.15 in January. And Pennsylvania recently approved an increase in the wage, which will reach $7.15 on July 1.
John Sarno, head of the Employers Association of New Jersey, said the higher minimum wage has not resulted in wage inflation or job elimination.
Sucks to be an inexperienced teenager trying to find a job, unless your family owns the place…
http://www.slate.com/id/2103486/
“Suppose you’re a small entrepreneur with, say, 10 full-time minimum-wage workers. Then a 50 cent increase in the minimum wage is going to cost you about $10,000 a year. That’s no different from a $10,000 tax increase. But the politicians who imposed the burden get to claim they never raised anybody’s taxes.”
And given the costs of living in hightaxland a boost in the minimum wage may not have much affect (since people literally cannot afford to live off it, and many low-wage unskilled jobs are already higher-paid than the minimum), raising the wage at a federal level _does_ impact lowtaxland pretty hard:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060926/dctu032.html?.v=67
Guess where lots of people are moving from and going to?
Let’s just say for a second that some lucky minimum wage working stiff actually does lose his job because the wage went up. How hard will it be for him to find another one?
BTW,
Someone needs to ask Galandak what benefits he sees to the state attracting more minimum wage workers. This stuff never gets sensible.
Measurable impact or irrelevant? I’ve got to admit, if we’re facing recession next year, the timing of this couldn’t be any worse.
jb
Fair question, I believe its impact is very related to the various costs of living per state. That’s why I’m not nearly as annoyed with per-state minimum wages. But one size most definitely does not fit all, which is why I think both federal minimum wages and the Davis-Bacon act (when used to apply different states’ wage levels to other states) are terrible.