Does raising the minimum wage cost jobs?
25 June 2026
Thirty years after Card and Krueger, the question still splits economists, and it has narrowed to one point: how competitively does the low-wage market actually clear?
If forced to bet, the monopsony read is stronger at the wage levels actually proposed.
The commentary
Three positions, audited in full
Each makes a different kind of case against the reports: the measure, the load-bearing input, the clock.
The disemployment case now leans on its cleanest natural experiment. Studying Seattle's ordinance, Jardim and colleagues found that
“the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by 6-7 percent”
That is the textbook price-floor effect, turning up in the hours data. Read as a general law it says: raise the wage floor and the market buys less low-wage labour.
Audit Hasty Generalisation Logic
It is one city, at a wage ($13) near the top of the range anyone had studied; treating Seattle's result as what every labour market does assumes they all clear the same way. That is the very point in dispute.
Which is where the evidence comes in, and the other camp denies exactly that.
The other camp answers from the accumulated record. Pooling 138 state minimum-wage changes, Cengiz and colleagues report that
“the overall number of low-wage jobs remained essentially unchanged over five years following the increase”
Pay rose, employment held. Empirically it is the stronger hand. Yet it makes a quiet move of its own, sliding from the increases actually measured to increases of any size.
Audit Equivocation Logic
It slides from "increases within the studied range left employment unchanged" to "no increase could cost jobs". Those are two different claims; the measured changes never approached the levels the disemployment case worries about.
The field: who stands where
Each voice in its strongest form. Inclusion is not agreement.
The map · 2 audited positions
how to read the map
Tap a numbered marker to jump to that voice’s card; the same number sits on the card. A wider marker means we are less sure exactly where that voice sits on the axis (how placement works).
The editor's view
written by hand · no engine text
If forced to bet, the monopsony read is stronger at the wage levels actually proposed. But I hold it loosely, because those proposals keep drifting past the range we've studied.
Devil's advocate
A large enough jump leaves that studied range, and the textbook result could reassert itself.
“Our empirical findings challenge the prediction that a rise in the minimum reduces employment.”
Audit: One industry, one state border, one small step ($4.25 to $5.05). A null result there is read as a general verdict, yet it says nothing about the large increases now on the table. Absence of an effect at the bottom of the range is not its absence across it.
“among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects”
Neumark & Wascher (2006) · NBER
Audit: The weight of the literature is doing the work, but the weighing is theirs ("the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence"), so the count turns on which studies were let in. A consistent negative sign still fixes neither the size of the effect nor whether it survives at the wages actually proposed.
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Sources
- -1 Jardim et al. (Seattle) · NBER (placement: med)
- +1 Cengiz et al. · NBER (placement: med)
- WSJ column · Wall Street Journal : Opinion column on the disemployment side; cited as commentary, not quoted or audited here.
- Neumark & Wascher · NBER : Survey concluding the most credible studies show negative employment effects; audited briefly under Other takes.
- CBO, 2019 · Congressional Budget Office : Projection of job losses from a federal increase, cited on the disemployment side; not audited here.
- Autor et al. · Review of Economics and Statistics : Near-neutral labour-economics work on wage effects, cited for context; not audited here.
- Manning, monopsony survey · Journal of Economic Literature : Survey of monopsony evidence in low-wage labour markets underpinning the monopsony case; not quoted or audited here.
- Card & Krueger (1994) · American Economic Review : The founding monopsony-side result (New Jersey); audited briefly under Other takes.
- The Atlantic piece · The Atlantic : Magazine argument on the monopsony side, cited as commentary; not audited here.
- Dube et al. · IRLE, Berkeley : Meta-analysis finding minimal employment effects, the strongest monopsony-side empirical entry; not quoted or audited here.