Analyses the potential effects of minimum wage legislation on the labour market and identify its potential beneficial and harmful effects with reference to the UK economy.

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Due to the wide disparity between the rich and the poor, people who are working as lower class e.g. cleaners, security guards may not earn enough to satisfy their basic needs, while people who are working as higher class e.g. professionals are having their luxurious life. In the view of this phenomenon, minimum wage is introduced to narrow the wealth gap between the rich and poor. However, there are many controversies over the implementation of minimum wage claimed by the economist, especially on the effect of unemployment. The majority of the British favours the increase in minimum wage as it would help the poor and lead to the well-being of the society as a whole. However, what is minimum wages? What are the advantages and disadvantages of introducing it? Minimum wage is defined as the minimum amount employer need to pay and this amount is set by the government through legislation. If there is no minimum wage, the keen competition between workers for limited jobs would cause wage to fall until it reach the equilibrium wage, so minimum wage is set to prevent wages from falling and remain in acceptable level. Most labour markets in the developed country is affected by minimum wage, it has a large potential impact towards the economy. Hence, it is important to understand the economics effect of minimum wage to the economy. In demand and supply curve, the intersection point of demand and supply curve is the market equilibrium, where the equilibrium supply is equal to the equilibrium demand. If there is no external factor affecting the demand of labour, those who are seeking employment would be employed. However this will not occur if the wages of the workers exceed the equilibrium wage, because the quantity demanded for working is less than the quantity supplied or quantity available at minimum wage level. And this is produced by an artificial price floor,

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