One of the arguments that is used in the minimum wage debate is that a higher minimum wage will drive productivity higher. This is true, it will, because only those jobs where the labour is productive enough to cover the higher minimum will survive. We don’t in fact measure the productivity of unemployed people. Thus, if one of the adaptation mechanisms to a higher minimum wage is that businesses increase labour productivity then by definition there will be fewer jobs : Sir Charlie Mayfield, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership and a government adviser on productivity, told the Guardian […]
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