The Minimum Wage and Search Effort Camilla Adams Jonathan Meer CarlyWill Sloan NBER Working Paper No. 25128

Issued in October 2018

NBER Program(s):Labor Studies

Labor market search-and-matching models posit supply-side responses to minimum wage increases that may lead to improved matches and lessen or even reverse negative employment effects. Yet there is no empirical evidence on this crucial assumption. Using event study analysis of recent minimum wage increases, we find that increases to minimum wage do not increase the likelihood of searching, but do lead to large yet very transitory spikes in search effort by individuals already looking for work. The results are not driven by changes in the composition of searchers.

(1070 K) Acknowledgments Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w25128