Category Archives: Low Wage Work

My former labour economics professor Richard Freeman appeared on the Colbert Report recently, to talk about unions. Tis enjoyable viewing, particularly if you know Richard.

The Progressive Policy Institute has released a paper proposing an expansion of the US Earned Income Tax Credit, which happens to be one of my favourite policies. It also contains a useful discussion of the various presidential candidates’ proposals to … Continue reading →

Professor David Neumark is presently visiting ANU. He’ll be giving two major lectures while in Australia – a talk at the Australian Fair Pay Commission on Friday 3 August about minimum wages, and a talk at ANU on Monday 6 … Continue reading →

Thanks to psychologists (and a few economists), we know that the way issues are framed can have a big difference on how they’re perceived. In a signal illustration of the importance of context, the Fair Pay Commission’s decision to raise … Continue reading →

There’s a reason policymakers do so few randomised evaluations of job training programs: they tend to show that the programs don’t work very well. The Labor Market Impacts of Youth Training in the Dominican Republic: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation David … Continue reading →

According to a new article by Daniel Klein and Stewart Dompe in EconJournalWatch, 83.5% of US economists (and 78.8% of Australian economists) believe that “A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers”. But not all take this view. Klein … Continue reading →

Somebody may well have written on this already. If so, I apologise. But I haven’t read anything on the topic, so perhaps it’s new to you too. Flipping through the HILDA dataset on the weekend (as you do), I stumbled upon an … Continue reading →

The NYT discusses proposals to raise the US federal minimum wage by 40% (from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour by 2009). Advocate Jared Bernstein estimates that it will directly affect about 6 million workers, and indirectly affect another 7 … Continue reading →

Nathan Lambert has posted a provocative Fabian essay on The New Leisure Crisis, in which he argues that: The idea that these people should ‘contribute to their communities’ is ignorant and Rousseauian. Whatever jobs they might have done are gone. … Continue reading →

University of South Australia Professor Barbara Pocock has recently been delivering the Clare Burton memorial lecture around Australia. Here’s the text. Much better than most social scientists, the lecture melds lived experience and data, as well as taking account of both … Continue reading →

I gave a little presentation at Melbourne University last night, on the question “Does Raising the Minimum Wage Help the Poor?”, and thought some people might be interested in glancing at it. Here it is in Powerpoint and PDF. Basic … Continue reading →

Over at ControveryEcon CoreEcon, Joshua Gans thinks that the Australian Fair Pay Commission has been too generous. He points out that if they really only wanted to maintain the real incomes of minimum wage workers, they should’ve adjusted by less … Continue reading →

David Neumark and William Wascher have pulled together a blunderbuss of a minimum wage review. In 152 pages, the paper discusses over 90 recent studies on the effect of minimum wages on employment, including 4 studies from Australia. Their conclusions: Minimum … Continue reading →

The Australian Fair Pay Commission has handed down its first decision. The Australian Fair Pay Commission has announced its Federal Minimum Wage decision for October 2006. The Commission announced an increase of $27.36 per week for minimum wage rates up … Continue reading →

The Australian Fair Pay Commission is handing down its decision on Thursday at 11am. The current minimum wage is $484.40 per week (or $12.75 per hour for a 38 hour week). The ACTU has asked for an increase of $30 … Continue reading →