Remember this whole thing?
Boy, you don’t hear much about that lately. I wonder why?
Might have something to do with unskilled labor wages skyrocketing across the country. In a lot of places unless you are working at a fast food joint, you can easily make more than $15 per hour with minimal or no skills and experience. I drove through a couple of small towns north of us on Sunday and every little factory has “Help Wanted” signs out front. Many are offering starting wages from $18-20 per hour and these are small rural towns in a very inexpensive area to live. A local Wal-Mart distribution center is offering over $22/hour to start on a huge billboard.
It turns out that the labor market will respond to supply and demand. The supply of willing workers is down, the demand for those workers is up and so the wages rise. It didn’t require government arbitrarily creating a new minimum wage.
On the other hand, the very thing we all warned about regarding higher wages is happening as prices continue to rise across the board. Almost as if you can’t tinker with one part of the economic system without causing ripples through the rest. If only there was an academic discipline that examined this sort of thing….
Where I live, the cost of living is low compared to the rest of the country. Hobby Lobby is offering $17/hr to start plus generous benefits package. McDonalds is offering around 12 plus.
Being retired, not in the job market, but like you said, there are help wanted signs all over the place.
People would have killed for an entry level retail job paying $17/hour less than three years ago but nah, inflation is under control.
Soon enough it will be "Fight for (a) $15 Happy Meal"