"The Minimum Wage and the Employment of Youth: Evidence from the Nlsy"

Abstract

Using panel data on individuals from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that employed individuals who were affected by the increases in the federal minimum wage in 1979 and 1980 were 3 to 4% less likely to be employed a year later, even after accounting for the fact that workers employed at the minimum wage may differ from their peers in unobserved ways. These results were obtained using a methodology similar in spirit 10 Card's recent work on the topic, although we use individual rather than state-level data, and an earlier time period.