Last Friday NC Policy Watch ran another in their series of let’s
attack the right since we really don’t have anything constructive to
offer
articles. Read it if you want,
but this line really surprised me, although it probably shouldn’t have.
“What happened to the big increase in unemployment that was supposed to
follow the state?s minimum wage hike?”

Of course, not a single economist has ever predicted that minimum wage
increases would bring about a big or probably even a noticeable
increase in the general unemployment rate. The prediction of economic
theory relates to a tiny percentage of the total work force, that is,
the very low skilled. To reiterate this prediction (listen carefully
now so you?ll get it right the next time, and also so you can pass your
econ 101 midterm): a minimum wage, at the levels that we are dealing
with, will bring about a higher unemployment rate for the very lowest
skilled workers in the economy than for higher skilled workers.
This
hypothesis is clearly corroborated. The unemployment rate for the least
skilled in the economy tends to be about 3-4 times the overall
unemployment rate. This includes teenagers (especially African American
teenagers) and African Americans under 25.

The prediction for an increase
in the minimum wage, like we recently had in North Carolina, is that
this disparity would widen, not that the overall unemployment rate
would increase. The change in unemployment for this tiny fraction of
the overall workforce would, in terms of the total workforce, be too
small to show up in the overall numbers. The fact is that the only way
the left can win on the minimum wage is to ascribe an argument to their
opponents that they didn’t make and then proceed to show how that
argument is wrong.