Minimum Wage Legislation

1310 Words6 Pages
Introduction In Ontario, minimum wage legislation has changed four times over the past 16 years. Moreover, since 1994, the minimum wage has increased from $6.70 to $10.25 in 2010. The intended purpose of minimum wage legislation has been to reduce poverty and give more earning power to those working in low-wage sectors. However, there has been a wide disposition that increases in minimum wage actually worked so as to increase poverty in two ways, i. Raises in minimum wage have led to increases in unemployment. ii. The rise in unemployment has been more concentrated amongst those below the current minimum wage level. While these hypotheses have been prevalent, results have ranged from adverse effects to employment1 to unconvincing2.…show more content…
The scales tip in favour of saying yes, when it comes to past and contemporary research. More specifically, the most published results either agree with the effect or unconvincingly abstain from such statements. Swidinsky (1980) used two equation models of employment ratios and labour force participation rates to capture the elasticity of labour supply with respect to changes in wages. However, there are two steadfast approaches to such results which have uses depending on the volatility of the…show more content…
At (L, W), this is where the market ordinarily clears. However, under the imposed legislation, WM, there is now a disparity between labour demanded and labour supplied. The difference, LM – L, is the disemployment that results from the firm facing an increase in input cost. The geometric triangle “ABC” defines the aggregate income lost from the lost work hours as a result of legislation. Data & Interpolation From here, the value of the legislation will be extracted first in terms of incidence of minimum wage workers across different categories. For the sake of analysis, Table 1: Minimum wage workers by age and sex (2002 – 2006)3 | | | | | | | | Employees | | Incidence (%) | 2002 ('000) | 2003 ('000) | 2004 ('000) | 2005 ('000) | 2006 ('000) | Both Sexes | | | | | | | 15 to 19 | 30.1 | 97.0 | 104.7 | 98.8 | 98.1 | 96.5 | All Ages | 4.1 | 240.1 | 250.4 | 254.7 | 256.6 | 260.0 | | | | | | | | Males | | | | | | | 15 to 19 | 23.9 | 36.7 | 38.6 | 38.2 | 36.9 | 36.0 | All Ages | 2.9 | 89.9 | 93.2 | 94.8 | 95.3 | 96.7 | | | | | | | | Females | | | | | |
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