The Minimum Wage Destroys Jobs

Lots of interesting perspectives here. I have a related story.

I work at Starbucks, in Iowa, where minimum wage was 5.15/hour.

Iowa just recently passed a law to increase the minimum wage from 5.15 to 7.25, (in steps, the first step was to 6.20 on April 1st, and the second stop is to 7.25 on January 1st, 2008).

Starbucks hired me at a starting wage of 7.00/hour. In a state that pays a minimum wage of 5.15/hour, that makes Starbucks a pretty attractive entry-level job. 1.50 more than the minimum wage? Awesome! Not to mention all the amazing benefits (but those have nothing to do with minumum wage so I'll leave those out of this discussion).

As a result, we got many many many applications for new employees, and we always had our pick of the litter for people wanting jobs.

To put all this into context...Starbucks is a fairly physical intensive job. You're on your feet your whole shift, you're moving around, lifting moderately heavy to heavy items (gallons of milk repeatedly, up to boxes and cambros filled with coffee and liquids). Basically, when I get home I'm usually pretty tired, and sometimes even exhausted. But the wage was worth it.

With the new minimum wage, Starbucks is going to comply by raising the starting wage to 7.25. What once was a job that paid more than 1.50 over minimum is now going to be a minimum-paying job.

It makes little difference to me in terms of pay now that I'm in management and my salary is not affected by minimum wage... but it's frustrating because we can't find the same quality of help as we used to be able to -- people can get easier jobs where they just stand (or sit!) around and make just as much as the hard-working employees at our store. What we're faced with now more than ever is a huge influx of highschoolers wanting jobs at our store, and the more dependable and harder working employees quitting (unemployment is low in Iowa, no shortage of jobs). People that are still in grade school are great help during the summer... but labor laws and school hours really limit the availability we can get out of them during the rest of the year. And people with office cubicle jobs want coffee every day of the year.

I'm slightly disappointed with the way that Starbucks intends to compensate for the increase of minimum wage. It's one of the few things that I haven't agreed with them on. But I can also understand how they don't want to affect their bottom line more than is necessary. I just hope they will realize the mistake if/when the quality of workers degrades to the point where it affects business and customer loyalty. Ideally they would maintain a steady 1.50 wage gap over the minimum to keep employees happy and keep the quality ones around.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Ok, so what's the consensus? The minimum wage is good? Or is the minimum wage bad? Someone, please summarize!

There's nowhere I can't reach.