Working Paper

Minimum wage careers?

Abstract: This paper investigates the extent to which people spend careers on minimum wage jobs. We find that a small but non-trivial number of NLSY respondents spend 25%, 50%, or even 75% of the first ten years of their career on minimum or near-minimum wage jobs. Workers with these minimum wage careers tend to be drawn from groups such as women, blacks, and the less-educated that are generally overrepresented in the low-wage population. The results indicate that lifetime incomes of some workers may be supported by a minimum wage. At the same time, these same groups would be disproportionately affected by any minimum wage-induced disemployment. The results suggest that minimum wage legislation has non-negligible effects on the lifetime opportunities of a significant minority of workers.

Keywords: Minimum wage; Labor supply;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Part of Series: Finance and Economics Discussion Series

Publication Date: 1999

Number: 1999-46