Washington Examiner (DC) (12/22/15) Joseph Lawler

Recently enacted state minimum wage laws may have cost the economy 100,000 to 200,000 new jobs, according to an analysis published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on Monday. Economist David Neumark reviewed the effects of the federal and state minimum wage increases that have taken place since the federal minimum wage was set at $7.25 in 2007. Neumark multiplied the increases in the minimum wages by the estimates of job losses associated with higher minimum wages taken from recent studies to arrive at his conclusion. Neumark wrote that the loss of up to 200,000 is a “small drop” that should be weighed against the higher wages for those who remain employed. Neumark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, wrote that “the overall body of recent evidence suggests that the most credible conclusion is a higher minimum wage results in some job loss for the least-skilled workers—with possibly larger adverse effects than earlier research suggested.”