October 7, 2015
Page 9
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O PINION
The Case for Raising the Minimum Wage
Higher incomes
drive job growth
by William Spriggs
As states, cities and
municipalities across
the country raise wag-
es to improve the lives
of working people, it
is worth highlighting
how such moves affect
low-income communi-
ties of color.
Many argue that
higher wages hurt job growth.
Here’s why that thinking is wrong.
The Congressional Budget Of-
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available research on the effects of
the minimum wage, found that as
many studies found job gains as
found job losses, with the average
estimate being that increases in
the minimum wage have no mea-
surable effect on employment.
Digging more deeply into the
studies’ various methodologies,
the CBO noted that the best and
most convincing studies looked
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minimum wages were increased
in localities where bordering ju-
risdictions did not raise their min-
imum wage.
The CBO found that in those
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effects
e employment
were observed in the
w
localities that raised
lo
their minimum wage
th
c compared with em-
p ployment in the bor-
d dering communities.
On that basis, the cur-
O
r rent consensus among
e economists is that rais-
ing the minimum wage has negli-
gible effects on employment.
During the expansion of pri-
vate-sector employment that be-
gan in 2010, and is now at record
length, many states and localities
have raised their minimum wage.
Despite this, the sector most sen-
sitive to increases in the minimum
wage-the fast-food restaurant
sector-has seen the greatest job
growth of any sector. Job growth
in those states with higher min-
imum wages is not lagging job
growth in states that have failed to
raise their minimum wage; again,
this is true when looking at neigh-
boring states with different mini-
mum wages.
It continues to be the case that
minimum wages are presented as
a creator or destroyer of jobs. In
reality, job growth is driven by
rising incomes and growing cus-
tomer bases that demand products,
prompting businesses to respond
by hiring more people to increase
their output and serve the growing
customer demand. Low wages do
not create jobs or expand custom-
er bases.
An error often repeated with-
in the black community confuses
the notion of not employed with
unemployed. These are two sep-
arate concepts, and economists
use them to understand the policy
solution. The black community
suffers from a very high unem-
ployment rate-the share of people
DFWLYHO\ WU\LQJ WR ¿QG ZRUN 1D-
tionally, while the number of un-
employed people per job opening
has come down, it remains higher
than when the labor market peaks
at slightly fewer than two unem-
ployed people per job opening.
The black community also suffers
from a low labor-force partici-
pation rate, which is the share of
people either employed or look-
ing for work-those who are active
members of the labor market.
Because of high unemployment
rates, black working people are
far more likely than white work-
ing people to accept low-wage
work. Among households with
full-time year-round working peo-
ple, 9.2 percent of black families
live in poverty compared with 3.4
percent of white families; among
female-headed households in the
black community, it’s 18.1 per-
cent. At every level of educational
attainment, black income is less
than white income, just as at every
level of educational attainment,
black unemployment rates are
higher than those of whites. Low-
ering black people’s wages will
not close the unemployment gap
faced by black working families.
Blacks will work for less, but
that doesn’t mean blacks will
work for anything. Some are not
active in the labor market because
of discouragement over limited
job openings. However, many are
discouraged not over job openings
but over wages. Non-employment
includes both those who are unem-
ployed-actively looking for work-
and those not in the labor force
at all, such as young people who
would rather pursue more educa-
tion than take low wages, mothers
who can’t afford transportation
and child care expenses at low
wages, and non-custodial fathers
who wouldn’t net an income at
low wages after paying for trans-
portation and child support.
Raising wages will increase
black labor-force participation.
More black working people will
continue to be engaged in job
search if the jobs they are chas-
ing pay higher wages. Working
and being poor can be a pover-
ty trap itself. Those who want to
help the black community should
work to raise the wages of the jobs
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locked into. Raising wages for
black working families means that
money will support the growth
and survival of businesses in their
community.
William Spriggs is chief econo-
PLVW IRU WKH$)/&,2 DQG D SUR-
fessor in the Department of Eco-
nomics at Howard University.
A Quip to Insult Millions of Black Americans
Jeb Bush blows
it on race
by Raul A. Reyes
The Republican
Party has struggled
for years to attract
more voters of col-
or. In a recent cam-
paign appearance,
candidate Jeb Bush
offered yet another
useful case study of
how not to do it.
At a campaign stop in South
Carolina, the former Florida gov-
ernor was asked how he’d win
over African-American voters.
“Our message is one of hope and
aspiration,” he answered. So far,
so good, right?
“It isn’t one of division and get
in line and we’ll take care of you
with free stuff. Our message is one
that is uplifting — that says you
can achieve earned success.”
Whoops.
With just two words — “free
stuff” — Bush managed to insult
millions of black Americans, com-
pletely misread what motivates
black people to vote, and falsely
imply that African Americans are
the predominant consumers of vi-
tal social services.
First, the facts.
Bush’s suggestion that
A
African
Americans vote
f Democrats because of
for
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D from the Joint Center
Data
I
IRU3ROLWLFDODQG(FRQRPLF
S
Studies
shows that black
v
voters
increasingly pre-
f
ferred
the Democratic Party
o
over
the course of the 20th
c
century
as it stepped up its
s
support
for civil rights.
These days, more than 90 per-
cent of African Americans vote
for the Democratic Party’s pres-
idential candidates because they
believe Democrats pay more at-
tention to their concerns. Consider
that in the two GOP debates, there
was only one question about the
“Black Lives Matter” movement.
When they do comment on it,
Republican politicians feel much
more at home criticizing that
movement against police brutality
than supporting it.
Bush is also incorrect to suggest
that African Americans want “free
stuff” more than other Americans.
A plurality of people on food
stamps, for example, are white.
Moreover, government assis-
tance programs exist because
we’ve decided, as a country, to
help our neediest fellow citizens.
What Bush derides as “free stuff”
— say, Medicaid, unemployment
insurance, and school lunch sub-
sidies — are a vital safety net for
millions of the elderly, the poor,
and children, regardless of race or
ethnicity.
reported that, during his father’s
12 years in elected national of-
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obtained) favors for himself, his
friends, and his business associ-
ates.
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money for Bush’s presidential
campaign is coming from the
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earning success for generations,
despite the efforts of politicians like
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of minority voters and abolished
DI¿UPDWLYHDFWLRQDWVWDWHXQLYHUVLWLHV.
How sad that Bush, himself
a Catholic, made his comments
during the same week that Pope
Francis was encouraging Ameri-
cans to live up to their ideals and
help the less fortunate.
Finally, Bush’s crass comment
is especially ironic coming from
a third-generation oligarch whose
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Bush himself is a big fan of
freebies. The New York Times has
Bush family donor network.
And what about those corpo-
rate tax breaks, oil subsidies, and
payouts to big agricultural compa-
nies Bush himself supports? Don’t
those things count as “free stuff”
for some of the richest people in
our country?
It’s also the height of arro-
gance for Bush to imply that Af-
rican Americans are strangers to
“earned success.” African Amer-
icans have been earning success
for generations, despite the efforts
of politicians like Bush — who
purged Florida’s rolls of minority
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action at state universities.
If nothing else, this controversy
shows why his candidacy has yet
to take off as expected. His cam-
paign gaffes have served up end-
less fodder for reporters, pundits,
and comics alike.
Sound familiar?
As you may recall, Mitt Rom-
ney helped doom his own presi-
dential aspirations by writing off
the “47 percent” of the American
people he said would never vote
Republican because they were
“dependent upon government.”
In Romney’s view, they’re peo-
ple “who believe that they are vic-
tims, who believe the government
has a responsibility to care for
them, who believe that they are
entitled to health care, to food, to
housing, to you-name-it.”
Sorry, Jeb. The last thing this
country needs is another man of
inherited wealth and power lectur-
ing the rest of us about mooching.
5DXO $ 5H\HV LV DQ DWWRUQH\
and columnist based in New York
City. Distributed by OtherWords.
org.
