Rather than merely assuming that wage rises and labour regulations cause unemployment, as do many commentators, let’s look at the facts.
Many comparative studies have been done on this subject; typical is one from the Journal of Economic Perspectives (vol 11, no 3, 1997), but just google them yourself like I did, it’s not that hard!
These studies show many things that contradict free-market orthodoxies, for example, the following factors do not cause unemployment:
Other relevant findings:
So there is no clear evidence that wage rises cause unemployment; in general, employers hire as many people as they need, not as many as they can afford!
Obviously they will oppose wage rises, because each individual employer wants cheap staff but well-paid customers! But that doesn’t mean that decision makers or opinion-makers should accept (let alone actively peddle) this employer-centric view as valid economics.
In these potentially dire economic circumstances, it’s time we did let the facts get in the way of a good story.
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