If the Minimum wage goes up to $10 an hour, what happens to people now making $10.01 to $11.00 an hour? (companies, state)

[swagger]

Originally Posted by urbanlife78

The minimum wage had no effect on my job.

It affected the value of the dollars you earned, though.

Disagree?

Why did you get that annual raise? Were you actually producing more every year, justifying that increase? Or was it because the purchasing power of the dollars you were being paid was decreasing?

[thriftylefty]

They will have to decide if their job has any intrinsic value. When I was offered a teaching job the pay was about the same as the maintenance staff doing trade work. I had to decide was all the night and weekend work that comes with teaching worth it. Since I could do both.

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by swagger

It affected the value of the dollars you earned, though.

Disagree?

Why did you get that annual raise? Were you actually producing more every year, justifying that increase? Or was it because the purchasing power of the dollars you were being paid was decreasing?

Nope, the prices of goods at the time saw no effect from that increase.

My boss at the felt it was important to give his employees raises each year to promote longevity and loyalty. I couldn't tell you if personally was producing more because I was not in charge of their financial books.

[VTHokieFan]

Originally Posted by urbanlife78

That is between them and their employer, but their pay would not be affected.

Yes it would. Their pay would now be considered much closer to minimum wage. Not many semi-skilled employees will feel too good about making less than a dollar more than minimum wage when their skills are worth so much more.

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by VTHokieFan

Yes it would. Their pay would now be considered minimum wage. Not many semi-skilled employees will feel too good about making minimum wage.

Semi-skilled? I do believe you guys would tell them to go be "skilled" if they want more in pay. That s semi-skilled employee can either keep making what he is making, ask for a cost of living raise, or quit and find a job that pays more, each option comes with its own risk.

[freemkt]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

You don't think that employee compensation is bound by something like physics do? There are no Ten Commandments for this.

As someone who has hired over 100 professional type people and has been part of an HR department, employee compensation is fundamentally set by the market. The market means:

1. the pool of people (potential employees) qualified to do a job
2. the likelihood that a current employee would leave for another job
3. my need for the position

The larger #1 is, the less pressure there is to increase pay. If #1 is very small, then I have to pay more to attract them to work for me.

If my employees are leaving for other opportunities, I have to figure out why. If they are leaving for more money then I need to raise pay to keep them.

For #3 if the position is really important to me - I'll probably pay more to attract the right people.

#1: Generally employees leave minimum wage jobs because the job sucks. In college towns, they usually leave because they are graduating and leaving your area.

[VTHokieFan]

Originally Posted by urbanlife78

Semi-skilled? I do believe you guys would tell them to go be "skilled" if they want more in pay. That s semi-skilled employee can either keep making what he is making, ask for a cost of living raise, or quit and find a job that pays more, each option comes with its own risk.

Including the risks of raising the minimum wage. You get more unemployment when the minimum wage is increased. It's called supply and demand, would you like to see a graph of what a price floor does to supply and demand?

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by VTHokieFan

Including the risks of raising the minimum wage. You get more unemployment when the minimum wage is increased. It's called supply and demand, would you like to see a graph of what a price floor does to supply and demand?

I am still waiting to see a graph that ties unemployment to minimum wage increases. Based on the amount of minimum wage increases we have had since the 50s we should be at about 60-70% unemployment now.

[greywar]

A lot of those borderline folks get raises. Would the highest paid CEO's get raises? nope.

Would *I*? Probably not. at 45/hr I am too far from the 10/hr folks.

someone at 15 hr? maybe.

Weird huh...the benefits would go primarily to the 80% and not to the top 20%...hmmmm

[VTHokieFan]

Originally Posted by urbanlife78

I am still waiting to see a graph that ties unemployment to minimum wage increases.
Based on the amount of minimum wage increases we have had since the 50s we should be at about 60-70% unemployment now.

I don't understand why you think we should we be at 60-70% now. We're not at 60-70% unemployment because companies/firms raise prices in response to higher costs of doing business. I can assure you that prices have increased 60-70% since the 50s.

I'm not talking about rampant unemployment or depression here, I'm just saying that raising it, I suppose in the case of Washington, would result in maybe 2,000 to 3000 existing jobs being eliminated plus jobs that will never be created because of the increased cost.