I’ve long been deeply suspicious of contrarian research that purports to show that the minimum wage doesn’t decrease low-skilled employment. But Don Boudreaux explains my suspicion far better than I could:

Has any science ever devoted so much time, effort, and cleverness to

elaborate attempts to determine whether or not a central and

indisputably correct tenet of that science – a tenet used without

question to predict outcomes in general – fails to work as an accurate

predictor for one very specific, small slice of reality as has been

devoted by economics over the past two decades to determine whether or

not the law of demand works to accurately predict the effects of minimum

wages on the quantity demanded of low-skilled labor?

I’m pretty sure that the answer to my question is ‘no.’

I judge from the furious debate over the effects of minimum wages on

the quantity demanded of low-skilled labor that were there to exist

powerful political and ideological forces that stand to benefit if the

general public believes that small orange rocks dropped into swimming

pools cause no increases in the water levels of swimming pools, there

would be no shortage of physicists who conduct and publish studies

allegedly offering evidence that, indeed, the dropping of small orange

rocks into swimming pools does not tend to raise the water levels of

swimming pools (and, indeed, might even lower pools water levels!).

[…]

And so it is with minimum-wage legislation. The strong political and

ideological interests on the pro-minimum-wage side keep alive the

debate over whether or not raising employers’ costs of employing

low-skilled workers causes employers to further economize on the amounts

of low-skilled labor that they hire. There is no furious empirical

debate among scholars over whether or not, say, raising an excise tax on

oranges would, ceteris paribus, cause fewer oranges to be

bought and sold. There is no furious empirical debate among scholars

over whether or not, say, an increase in the tuition charged to attend

college would, ceteris paribus, discourage some people from

enrolling in college. There is no furious empirical debate among

scholars over whether or not, say, imposing a poll tax would, ceteris paribus, discourage some people from voting.

Yet because powerful political and ideological interests have a stake

in the market for low-skilled workers being immune from the normal

operation of the law of demand, a furious debate rages over whether or

not employers forced to pay more for labor do or don’t further economize

on labor.