State Minimum Wages, Employment, and Wage Spillovers: Evidence from Administrative Payroll Data

Radhakrishnan Gopalan, Barton H. Hamilton, Ankit Kalda and David Sovich

Journal of Labor Economics, 2021, vol. 39, issue 3, 673 - 707

Abstract: We use administrative payroll data to estimate the effect of the minimum wage on employment and wages. We find that both effects are nuanced. While the overall number of low-wage workers in firms declines, incumbent workers are no less likely to remain employed. We find that firms reduce employment primarily through hiring, and there is significant heterogeneity across the nontradable and tradable sectors. For wages, we find modest spillovers extending up to $2.50 above the minimum wage. Spillovers accrue to both incumbent workers and new hires, but only within firms that employ a significant fraction of low-wage workers.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (44)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711355 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/711355 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/711355

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().