Guest Writer
Guest Opinion
KRISTIN LOPEZ EASTLICK
It’s been a hard year for owners of small businesses across the country.
A car salesman in Arizona told the Reuters news agency that the economy has almost completely dried up sales at the dealership where he worked until he recently lost his job.
Todd Gerardo of Gilbert said his layoff was not entirely unexpected. “The economy is just so bad that for the first time in my life I just wasn’t selling any cars,” he said. “The business is just not there anymore.”
In states such as Arizona, where minimum wage is tied to the Consumer Price Index, small-business owners are really feeling the pinch – and will steadily continue to do so.
Arizona small-business owners again saw their employees’ wages increase effective Jan. 1, even though the economy is in the toilet.
Proponents of the minimum wage increase argue that people have to come before profits.
But when so many small businesses operate with razor-slim profits to begin with, those companies that are forced to pay their low-skilled employees a premium face a dilemma: Drive up prices and make their products less competitive, or shut down. And no one profits from a shuttered storefront.
Arizona policies that tie the minimum wage to the CPI assume all parts of the state are experiencing the same economic strength and inflation rate.
But people in areas such as Gilbert may be suffering more hardship than companies in Phoenix.
The CPI also routinely overestimates the inflation rate by more than 1 percent. The net effect of indexing is that negative economic effects become concentrated in areas of Arizona that need the biggest leg up. It’s a problem that cripples small businesses.
Productive, skilled employees get promotions and raises over time. Research from Miami University of Ohio and Florida State University shows that every year nearly two-thirds of minimum wage employees receive an increase in pay – a result of their increased skill, experience and work effort.
The vast majority don’t need a handout to get a raise.
Politically popular increases to the minimum wage are touted as help for the poor and support for low-income families. Yet only 24 percent of the benefits from a minimum wage hike go to the poorest 20 percent of families.
That’s because an overwhelming 80 percent of the people who earn minimum wage are teenagers who live with their parents. They’re not the primary breadwinner.
An inflated wage rate does comparatively little to support poor families, whereas the injuries such policies inflict on small businesses are immediate and undeniable.
As unemployment rates rise across the nation, states should look for ways to keep people in jobs, instead of worsening the problem by inflating the minimum wage.
These artificial bumps are having a serious impact: Between 2007 and 2008, the unemployment rate in Arizona grew at a faster pace than the unemployment rate in states that don’t index. Here, unemployment went up by 28.9 percent – 1.5 times the increase in nonindexing states, which averaged 19.4 percent.
It’s clear how state policies that enforce indexing have the same unfortunate effects as any other minimum wage mandates: growing unemployment and a minimal impact on poverty levels.
Yet amazingly, the average projected wage increase among all the states that have so far released their rates for 2009 is 5.14 percent.
Compare that with last year, when the average increase among all 10 states and localities that raised their minimum wage was 2.75 percent. In today’s economic climate, that’s virtually unconscionable.
During boom times, legislators need to be wary of implementing legislation that will have negative unintended consequences down the line.
We need policies that support small-business owners and keep America employed. Blindly inflating the minimum wage, regardless of how the economy is doing, is not the right solution.
Kristen Lopez Eastlick is the senior economic analyst at the Employment Policies Institute, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth.
As unemployment rates rise across the nation, states should look for ways to keep people in jobs, instead of worsening the problem by inflating the minimum wage.