Beginning in April of last year employment numbers in the city of Seattle began to drop as unemployment rose.
The AEI study, worked up from Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly surveys, shows that, between April and December last year, Seattle saw the biggest employment drop in any nine-month period since 2009 — a full year into the Great Recession.
The city unemployment rate rose a full percentage point.
From September through November of 2015 the reporting shows a loss of 10,000 jobs in Seattle in just three months, (right when you’d expect holiday hiring to ramp up?). What happened? We know Progressives happened.
Beginning in April of last year mandatory minimum wage increases started in Seattle on their way to 15.00/hour in 2017. Ever since, the number of jobs has declined and the employment rate with it.
The reporting also says that outside the city, where the law has no effect, businesses added 57,000 jobs by November.
The smart money is on the job collapse to settle a bit but to continue with some migration toward the direction those jobs went. This will leave many of the people we’ve been claiming all along would be hurt most, trapped in a city that has fewer entry level jobs for them.
But this no surprise to anyone living outside the #fightfor15 box, and it is no surprise to many leading the charge; minimum wage laws help politicians and union bosses, not workers.
Unless you are a worker outside Seattle. The left’s obsession with controlling the cost of labor in Seattle has been a boon for surrounding communities, if that makes anyone feel any better. And I’m sure there is some taxpayer money that can be plundered so the same politicians can take credit for Seattle jobs training programs they wouldn’t need if they’d left the minimum wage alone. But hey, this isn’t about workers or wages or what makes sense. Minimum wages are about politicians.
On another happy note, job growth is great outside the city. And there may be a recovery in some of these city jobs for as long as there are towers full of people who need to eat crowding in daily. They will be charged more, yanking money form the pockets of other workers who will then not have those dollars to spend elsewhere in the economy. They may just have fewer choices, which they should get used to as their planned economy becomes more planned.
They voted for it. They can live with it. But we should learn from it.
H/T Jazz at Hot Air
