Gateway to Think Tanks
来源类型 | PIIE Briefing |
来源ID | PIIE Briefing15-2 |
Raising Lower-Level Wages: When and Why It Makes Economic Sense | |
Tomas Hellebrandt; Michael Jarand; Jacob Funk Kirkegaard; Tyler Moran; Adam S. Posen; Justin Wolfers; Jan Zilinsky | |
发表日期 | 2015-04-01 |
出版年 | 2015 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | As the United States emerges from the Great Recession, concern is rising nationally over the issues of income inequality, stagnation of workers' wages, and especially the struggles of lower-skilled workers at the -bottom end of the wage scale. While Washington deliberates legislation raising the minimum wage, a number of major American employers—for example, Aetna and Walmart—have begun to voluntarily raise the pay of their own lowest-paid employees.
In this collection of essays, economists from the Peterson Institute for International Economics analyze the potential benefits and costs of widespread wage increases, if adopted by a range of US private employers. They make this assessment for the workers, the companies, and for the US economy as a whole, including such an initiative's effects on national competitiveness. These economists conclude that raising the pay of many of the lowest-paid US private-sector workers would not only reduce income inequality but also boost overall productivity growth, with likely minimal effect on employment in the current financial context. "It is possible to profit from paying your employees well…and increasing lower-paid workers' wages is the way forward for the United States," argues Adam S. Posen in his lead essay (reprinted from the Financial Times). Justin Wolfers and Jan Zilinsky argue that higher wages can encourage low-paid workers to be more productive and loyal to their employers and coworkers, reducing costly job turnover and the need for supervision and training of new workers. Tomas Hellebrandt estimates that if all large private sector corporations in the United States outside of sectors that intensively use low-skilled labor increased wages of their low-paid workers to $16 per hour, the pay of 6.2 percent of the $110 million private-sector workers in the United States would increase on average by 38.6 percent. The direct cost to employers would be $51 billion, only around 0.3 percent of GDP. Jacob Kirkegaard and Tyler Moran explore the experience of employers in other advanced countries, with its implications for international competitiveness, and Michael Jarand assesses the impact of a wage increase on the near-term development of the US macroeconomy. Data disclosure: The data underlying the figures in this analysis are available for download in links listed below. |
目录 |
Introduction US Companies Pay Well and Do Better Higher Wages for Low-Income Workers Lead to Higher Productivity Effect of Large Corporations Raising Wages of Low-Paid Workers Raising the US Wage Floor: The International Perspective How Raising Wages of Low-Paid Workers at Large Corporations Would Affect Income Inequality The Effects of a Wage Increase by Large Corporations on the Macroeconomy Income Inequality Developments in the Great Recession Job Creation and a Healthy US Economy |
主题 | Inequality ; Labor |
URL | https://www.piie.com/publications/piie-briefings/raising-lower-level-wages-when-and-why-it-makes-economic-sense |
来源智库 | Peterson Institute for International Economics (United States) |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/454207 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Tomas Hellebrandt,Michael Jarand,Jacob Funk Kirkegaard,et al. Raising Lower-Level Wages: When and Why It Makes Economic Sense. 2015. |
条目包含的文件 | ||||||
文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
piieb15-2.pdf(388KB) | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 |
除非特别说明,本系统中所有内容都受版权保护,并保留所有权利。