Posts tagged wage floor
Economically Devastating Rent-Seeking in America’s Labor Markets
June 9, 2026 // Nowhere is rent-seeking more pervasive—or more costly—than in America’s labor markets. From compulsory unionism to occupational licensing, prevailing-wage laws, gig-worker reclassification rules, and strategic minimum-wage campaigns, concentrated interest groups (often unions and incumbent professionals) routinely use state power to extract “rents” from workers, employers, taxpayers, and consumers. These are not abstract economic theories. Rent-seeking is an everyday mechanism that distorts wages, limits opportunities, and transfers trillions of dollars every year, creating harmful economic inefficiencies penalizing employees, employers, taxpayers, and consumers. Compulsory Unionism: The Textbook Case of Labor-Market Rent-Seeking Compulsory unionism
Mamdani’s Minimum-Wage Hike Will Hurt Young Workers Most
November 14, 2025 // The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 10 percent rise in the minimum wage reduces teen employment by about 0.7 percent. Using the same metric, raising New York City’s wage floor 82 percent would reduce Gotham’s teen employment by roughly 5 percent to 6 percent, on average. Teenagers who manage to keep their jobs will probably see fewer hours, meaning less job experience, fewer opportunities for mentoring, and slower wage growth in the future. Young people may have shot themselves in the foot, in other words, by supporting Zohran Mamdani. The soon-to-be-mayor’s “$30 by ’30” will make New York costlier, especially for the young, the least able to afford it.
Statesman employees return to work after strike
April 12, 2024 // Gannett CEO Michael Reed didn't mince words when asked in an onstage interview last month how he's dealing with an uptick of union activity and pressure. "I think the Guild, unfortunately, plays dirty and lies to our employees," Reed told Axios at the annual Mather Symposium on media in Atlanta. In response to his comments, NewsGuild-CWA president Jon Schleuss said in a statement to Axios: "Gannett's last SEC filing showed Mike Reed making 66 times that of a median employee, while paying journalists poverty wages, cutting an average of 2,800 jobs a year and hiring lawyers to stonewall workers at the bargaining table."