The minimum wage hike occurred in late 2018.
> Roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike, according to a NYC Hospitality Alliance survey taken just one month after the bill took effect.
> Only about 4 percent of survey respondents indicated that none of the above changes took place in their restaurants.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-york-city’s-15-mi...
Typically, in a restaurant in Philly or places with similarly lower-than-minimum service wages (which still has the $2.75 or whatever minimum for service workers), you'll be scheduled excessively for hours when the restaurant definitely isn't going to have any business. For example, coming in at 330/4 to start prep for the dinner shift.
When labor costs basically nothing, there's no reason not to overschedule them.
This reduced the amount of time I could spend outside of work learning to program (for example... since it's what I did hah) or others could spend improving their skills for basically no money. It's a huge detriment to the employees. You'd stand around cleaning for some nitpicky manager making 0/hour effectively, doing untipped cleaning and prep work. Your paychecks will be $0 if you get even a modest amount of tips for the night (it's all taxed).
Now restaurants will be more particular about how they schedule employees, and the untipped work actually costs money to have done (if a janitor would have to be paid minimum+ to do it, why should a server do it for $2.75/hr)?
I worked in some of the largest (non fast food) groups to single owner restaurants.
It’s so rare in the $2 an hour states. I worked at Chili’s during the worst parts of the recession and never made a paycheck. Once the economy picked up I went to greener pastures.
The survey you cite seems low quality anecdata compared to actual industry numbers shown in the study being discussed.
As to your first point, no, "the minimum wage hike" did not occur in late 2018. The final increase ($13.50 to $15.00) did indeed take place near the end of this study period, but the overall increase from 2013 to 2018 (from $7.25 in 2013 to $13.50 by late 2018 to $15.00 by end of 2018) reflects a more than doubling of the minimum wage over the study period, so I think it is still a valid reflection of the impact of such a dramatic increase.
[1] https://thenycalliance.org/assets/documents/informationitems...
http://www.centernyc.org/new-york-citys-15-minimum-wage
actual report:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53ee4f0be4b015b9c3690...
At least talking about restaurants with tipped employees, the $15/hr includes a $5/hr tip wage! If a server makes enough in tips, the min wage the restaurant pays is only $10/hr. See appendix figure 1, page 22 of the pdf.
Why should I trust the data?
There have been too many times of selective definitions, selective measurements, selective polling, selective measurements... all for reaching an agreed upon conclusion. For example, the CDC used a specific definition of rape (excluding forced penetration, counting it as general sexual assault instead) that excluded the majority of male victims of domestic rape, and then used the now biased results to give high level summary data that was greatly misleading.
If I can't trust the CDC's reporting on an issues as serious as domestic sexual violence, then how can I trust anyone's data? Maybe peer reviewed science in the hard sciences, but social science (including economics) has a similar issue of selective measurements, ignored replication, and biased publishing.
So I guess to start with, what peer review has this undergone? To what extent has it been replicated? What criticisms does it have (and none is a very bad sign)? What is the biases of the group(s) that did the work involved? What is the biases of the group(s) that provided funding?
Yes, it is odd I'm at the point where anecdotes seem to have as much weight as data because anecdotes are understood to be inherently biased whereas data is treated as pure, reliable, and free of bias when it isn't.
Also, please note that someone has already posted a criticism of this data.
The problem is that there is not much verification going on.
The minimum wage might well have led to a worse outcome for those workers that is being masked by some other effect. In theory a minimum wage rise will have no impact (good or bad) if the equilibrium wage is high enough.
It strains credulity to think that New York's restaurant scene is thriving because of the minimum wage. There is clearly something else going on.
And the explanation is easy, trivial even: people who eat at restaurants have more money to do so.
US's overall economic picture is so heavily tilted in favor of the wealthy that literally anything that puts money in the hands of the poor is going to cause an economic boost.
^_~ You might not have researched that. There are studies that suggest net-positive impact, but there are also studies that suggest change for the worse.
> And the explanation is easy, trivial even: people who eat at restaurants have more money to do so.
Minimum wage earners aren't going to be investing in increased production capacity. Best case scenario, something that was going to be consumed by the rich gets consumed by a minimum wage earner instead. Middling case scenario, something that was going to be consumed by the middle class isn't produced. Worst case scenario, less investment and we have a little bit less to go around in 10/20 years.
None of those 3 is catastrophic, but it is very unlikely that minimum wage rises are a big-picture win. The idea that even with a minimum wage increase a poor person could out-compete a member of the middle class for any good or service is optimistic.
There aren't. The literature is surprisingly uniform. I mean, I'm sure you can find something funded by a libertarian thinktank that says otherwise, but nothing by credible researchers doing honest research. Universally and without exception, areas that increase the minimum wage experience economic boosts compared to similar areas that don't.
> Minimum wage earners aren't going to be investing in increased production capacity.
Nobody said they would, or would have to. Restaurant owners do the investing; wage earners do the consuming. Investment follows demand, obviously.
> very unlikely that minimum wage rises are a big-picture win.
Oddly, the literature says the exact opposite.
You seem to think that there's a fixed supply of restaurant meals - only 100 meals, no more, and if Sue wants to eat then Larry doesn't get to. This is... not the case.
Quote: "During this period, New York City has seen a strong economic expansion of the restaurant industry, outpacing national growth in employment, annual wages, and the number of both limited- and full-service restaurant establishments."
Perhaps the disagreement you see is because this study focuses on the workers, instead of the business owners. Food service worker wages and employment rates are up relative to overall growth. This article is dispelling the notion that increasing worker wages will lead to worse outcomes for those workers, which is a common objection to increasing the minimum wage.