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Unemployment and Minimum Wages

from Brad DeLong (delong@econ.berkeley.edu)
Oh, yes. I think that minimum wage laws almost surely do raise the rate of unemployment.

But everything I've seen tends to make me think that (in the U.S. today, and in the U.S. in the past, at least) the minimum wage--along with other federal regulations affecting wages--is a relatively minor factor causing unemployment.

Certainly there is no reason to blame the minimum wage for high unemployment in the Great Depression, or for the ten percent unemployment rate seen in 1982...

Brad DeLong

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(posted 9026 days ago)

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