Bill McMorris of the Washington Free Beacon highlights a new study of the impact of increases in the government-mandated minimum wage.

Minimum wage increases intended to boost pay for low-income workers ended up increasing unemployment, according to a new study.

The study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that minimum wage increases reduced employment opportunities for low-skilled workers by nearly 6 points during the Great Recession.

“This period’s full set of minimum wage increases reduced employment among individuals ages 16 to 30 with less than a high school education by 5.6 percentage points,” the study says.

The study’s author, University of California at San Diego economist Jeffrey Clemens, analyzed the Current Population Survey in the context of a series of minimum wage hikes that brought the minimum from $5.15 per hour in 2007 to $7.25 in 2009, as well as the financial collapse of September 2008.

Workers with less than a high school education were hardest hit; unemployment and labor participation has lingered as a problem despite national economic recovery. The labor participation for young, low-skilled workers fell from 40 to 28 percent between 2006 and 2009 and remained far behind other workers.

“This group’s employment remained 13 percentage points (33 percent) below pre-recession levels,” Clemens found. Wage hikes were partially responsible for the lack of employment accounting for “43 percent of the sustained, 13 percentage point decline in this skill group’s employment rate.”