Say Anything Blog

Two Democrat legislators here in North Dakota, Sen. Tim Mathern and Rep. Jasper Schneider, plan to propose legislation that would raise North Dakota’s minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour by July 1st, 2009.

Rep. Schneider rather moronically defends this massive hike in the minimum wage thusly:

“It’s common sense. It’s time to raise the minimum wage,” Schneider said. “We’re literally paying our workers a 1997 wage in a 2007 economy. It’s just not reality.”

To hear Schneider tell it, everyone in North Dakota is making the minimum wage but that’s just not true.  Rhetoric from pandering populists aside, the reality of North Dakota’s minimum wage situation is that just 4,000 workers in this state actually made the minimum wage in 2005 according to the U.S. census.  That’s just six tenths of a percent (0.6%) of North Dakota’s entire population.

And according to the Employment Policies Institute, just 4% of North Dakotans who would be impacted by a minimum wage raise to $7.25/hour are the single wage earners for their families.  The other 96% are young people who live with parents or family members whose income is not the primary income for the family.  Part-timers and students, to be specific.

What’s more, only about 520,000 people nationally - about three tenths of one percent (0.3%) of our work force - make the minimum wage.  And of that 520,000 roughly half - or 260,000 - are teenagers.

So that leaves about 260,000.  Of those, it’s hard to say how many are just retirees keeping busy or stay-at-home moms working a job for vacation money, but you get the point.  The number of people actually subsisting on the minimum wage alone, both in North Dakota and nationally, is so small as to be inconsequential.  So while Rep. Schneider can blow smoke about what “we” pay low-wage workers in this state (as though, per his wording, wages were something to be decided by the state instead of negotiated between employers and employees), the reality is that the vast majority of North Dakota families don’t earn anything near the minimum wage.  And those that do earn probably do so by choice, either because of specific financial circumstances or simply because of poor life choices.

Another reason to oppose raising the minimum wage is that the small amount of financial gain it may provide for the minuscule portion of our population that actually earns it would likely be offset when employers of low-wage workers lay off workers due to the added expense of a higher minimum wage.  As has been explained on this site before, the minimum wage is little more than a subsidy for low-wage workers funded by a tax on employers who hire low-wage workers.  The minimum wage is counterproductive, so say the least.  It is burdensome to businesses, and the actual economic impact it has is minimal.