Employment Effects of Minimum Wage Increases – A Matched Pairs Design Using US Data

By Eric Karsten, Chong An Ong, Immanuel Adriana Rakshana, and Arushi Saksena

The minimum wage is a contentious issue, with proponents arguing that it is required to protect the wage security of low-income earners, and opponents arguing that it places downwards pressure on employment in the labor market. Our paper uses a differences in differences regression model, similar to the one used in Card & Krueger(1993) to estimate the unemployment effects of a minimum wage increase. Based on the four minimum wage changes used, we do not find convincing evidence that changes in the minimum wage lead to changes in unemployment levels. This contradicts the standard economic theory that a price floor in the labor market will lead to unemployment.