State Minimum Wage Changes and the Employment of Low-Wage Workers: New Evidence from 2011-2014

Although the Federal minimum wage has been constant since July 2009, many states have increased their own minimum wages since then. We use those increases to compare employment changes across the two groups of states, using a variety of difference methods. Our data come from the Current Population Survey for March through May of 2011 and 2014. We find no evidence that these minimum wage increases had an adverse effect on the employment of two groups heavily represented among minimum wage workers—teens not in college and adults with less than a high school education. We speculate that the findings may reflect a small decrease in unfilled job slots and in the number of workers engaged in full-time job search, so that the observed wage-employment combination lies closer to the maximum employment potentially available at that wage.