I didn’t know about this anecdote before, but apparently Alan Krueger of minimum wage study fame had an interesting follow up: shouldn’t the federal minimum wage be too high somewhere? What about Puerto Rico?

Apparently, he didn’t find evidence to suggest a strong effect there. But it’s got me curious to follow up with other territory or county vs state differences in the data. My suspicion is that the current very low minimum wages are just too low to see effects anyway, but that a federal $15/hr would be enough of a jump to see many county-level area median wages suddenly tip over.

Only 50% of restaurant employees are out of work, not 100%.