In case you needed any more reasons to oppose an increase in the government–mandated minimum wage, CBS reports one for you.
A new study has found that 38 percent of employers will lay workers off if the minimum wage is increased as President Barack Obama has proposed.
Express Employment Professionals, the nation’s largest privately held staffing firm, surveyed 1,213 business owners and human resources professionals nationwide asking them if they would be impacted if the minimum wage was increased.
Roughly 54 percent of the study participants said they would reduce hiring and 65 percent said they would raise prices on their goods and services.
“There’s been a lot of debate and speculation about the impact of a minimum wage increase on job creation,” Bob Funk, CEO of Express, and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said in a press release. “At Express, we decided to go directly to the employers who make those decisions to find out what a minimum wage increase to $10.10 would mean for them specifically and for the economy in general.”
Nearly 213 of those surveyed pay their employees the current $7.25 minimum wage.
“As with any such policy change, there are upsides and downsides,” Funk explained in the press release. “But based on this survey, there’s no denying that raising the minimum wage will result in layoffs, reduced hiring, and higher prices at a large chunk of American companies. How severe will those effects be? That remains to be seen, but policymakers will certainly want to be mindful of this reality as they legislate.”
They certainly want to be mindful of this reality, unless they’re content to demagogue the issue.
