For a long time economists—whose median income, according to a survey of the American Economic Association (aea), is $104,000 a year—considered minimum wages to be harmful. A survey of aea members in 1992 found that 79% of respondents agreed that a minimum wage increases unemployment among young and low-skilled workers. In an often fractious field, that is about as close to a consensus view as can be found. Although many economists recognised that low pay can indeed be a real problem, they argued that no pay was worse.
長期以來，經濟學家一直認為最低工資是有害的。根據美國經濟協會（aea）的調查，他們的平均年收入為104,000美元。 1992年對aea成員的調查發現，有79％的受訪者同意，訂最低工資會升高低技術年輕勞工的失業率。在通常爭得臉紅耳赤的（經濟學）領域，說這是目前可找到的共識觀點，雖不中亦不遠矣。儘管許多經濟學家承認薪水低確實可能成為真正棘手的問題，但他們認為薪水沒了會更糟。
They were not the only people who thought so. The same argument was used by Republican politicians. In 1968, America’s federal minimum wage stood at its highest level since first being applied in 1938. During the following two decades it fell, in real terms, by 44%. Though Jimmy Carter raised the wage in each of the four years he was president, keeping pace with inflation, Richard Nixon raised it only twice in six years and Ronald Reagan not once in eight. Some state and local politicians, mostly Democrats, tried to offset the fall by raising their minimum wages, creating a patchwork of different levels. The disparities this created allowed detailed empirical research on the policies’ effects, and provided the means by which the economists’ consensus would be undermined.
不只他們這麼想。共和黨政治人物也採用同樣的論點。美國聯邦政府1938年首次實施最低工資，到1968年攀抵最高水準，在隨後的二十年實質最低工資下降44％。儘管卡特（Jimmy Carter）在四年總統任期間年年提高工資，以跟上通貨膨脹步伐，尼克森（Richard Nixon）六年任內只提高兩次，雷根（Ronald Reagan）八年任內一次也沒有。一些州和地方政治人物── 主要是民主黨人──為抵銷這個（聯邦最低工資）降幅試圖各自提高最低工資，造成全國各地水平不一。這種不一致讓經濟學家能針對此政策的效果進行詳細的實證研究，但也給了他們打破共識的工具。
Not only did this see the conventional wisdom on minimum wages challenged in America; it also saw such policies spread elsewhere. Britain introduced a national minimum wage in 1998, and has increased it in recent years. Germany’s came into effect in 2015. Around 90% of countries have some sort of legal wage floor, although enforcement practices vary widely. Economists now have lots of data with which to understand how minimum wages affect the economy in practice and, in the context of a promise by Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, to raise America’s federal minimum wage to $15, to argue about how high they can go.
因此之故，關於最低工資的傳統觀念不僅在美國受到挑戰，這種政策還傳播到其他地方。英國1998年引進全國最低工資，並在近幾年調升；德國版則在2015年生效。大約90％的國家都訂有某種法定的工資底線，儘管實際執法千差萬別。經濟學家如今擁有大量數據，可從中了解最低工資實際上如何影響經濟，並且爭論可以調到多高的地步。與此同時，民主黨總統候選人拜登（Joe Biden）承諾，將把美國聯邦最低工資提高到15美元。
The concern that minimum wages destroy jobs comes from the most basic of economic models: supply and demand. If labour is made more expensive, employers will probably want less of it. Textbooks state that, in the absence of a minimum wage, a worker is paid his “marginal product of labour”, which means the value of what he produces. There is no room to deviate from this wage in either direction. If an employer tries to pay a worker less, a rival firm will poach him. If the government imposes a minimum wage that is higher than a worker’s marginal product, the firm loses money by employing him. He is left jobless instead.
最低工資會摧毀工作的顧慮來自最基本的經濟模型：供需理論。如果勞動力變得更昂貴，雇主或許會希望少用人力。教科書指出，在沒訂最低工資的情況下，勞工將領到他的「勞動邊際生產收益」，即他生產的產品的價值。這樣的工資沒有朝任一方偏離的餘地。如果雇主試圖少付工資，對手公司就會挖角；如果政府規定的最低工資高於勞工的邊際產值，公司雇用此人會虧本，結果反會造成他失業。
Reality is more complex. Firms do not know how much each worker contributes to their revenues. Few workers can find a new job at the drop of a hat. Yet the basic model reveals one important truth: the workers who are most vulnerable to losing their job as a result of the minimum wage are those whose productivity is low—the very people the policy is designed to help.
現實情況更複雜。企業不知每個勞工究竟貢獻了多少營收。勞工能立即找到新工作的少之又少。然而，此基本模型揭露一個重要的事實：生產力低的勞工，最容易因訂定最低工資而導致失業，但這些人正是這項政策要幫助的對象。
More sophisticated theorising about labour markets recognises that they are not perfectly competitive. There is no single wage at which a worker has his pick of employers. As a result, firms probably pay workers less than their marginal revenue product. How much less depends on negotiations and who does best there depends on bargaining power. In this framework, the goal of the minimum wage is not to defy market logic but to stop firms in a strong negotiating position from squeezing their workers.
更周延的勞動力市場理論，須認清這些市場的競爭並不完美。勞工不可能憑某個單一薪資水平挑選雇主。因此，企業支付給勞工的工資可能少於勞動邊際產值。至於少了多少，取決於薪資談判；，誰爭取到最好待遇，則取決於議價能力。在此框架下，訂最低工資的目的不是要違抗市場邏輯，而是要阻止談判地位強勢的公司壓榨勞工。
The upper bound on the minimum wage still applies: firms will not willingly employ workers at a loss. But below that ceiling, the effect of the minimum wage is ambiguous. It depends on a series of questions. Can a company replace its workers with machines? Can it raise prices and make its customers pay for the minimum wage? Does it face competition from foreign firms who face laxer rules overseas?
最低工資的上限仍然適用：企業不會明知虧損還甘願僱用勞工。但有了這個天花板，最低工資的影響變模糊了。這要視一連串問題而定：公司可以用機器取代工人嗎？可以藉調漲價格，讓客戶支付最低工資嗎？是否面臨外國公司競爭，而海外的規定較寬鬆？
Consider a comparison between factories and restaurants. Logically, there would be little scope to increase manufacturing pay using minimum wages, because firms face stiff international competition, and jobs are constantly automated away. By contrast, jobs in restaurants are hard to automate and face no foreign competition. Any increase in costs affecting the whole sector should be passed on to consumers. Job losses should be lower—especially if it turns out that consumers are willing to pay higher prices. So can one minimum wage do justice by both sectors?
思考工廠與餐館之間的比較。照邏輯來說，訂最低工資來提高製造業工資的空間很小，因為業者面臨激烈的國際競爭，而且工作不斷地被自動化。相較之下，餐廳的工作很難自動化，且沒有外來競爭。任何影響整個行業的成本增加應可轉嫁給消費者。失業率應該更低—尤其若事實證明消費者願意支付更高的價格。那麼，訂定單一的最低工資，能否同時適用於製造業及服務業？
The empirical study which revitalised the debate on minimum wages in the 1990s was by David Card and Alan Krueger, both then at Princeton University. In 1992 New Jersey increased its hourly wage floor from $4.25 to $5.05. Neighbouring Pennsylvania kept its own at $4.25. Thrilled at the prospect of a naturally occurring case study, the two economists gathered information of employment at fast-food restaurants in both states before the April increase and again several months later. Fast food seemed to offer the ideal conditions for a study, as a homogenous sector employing unskilled workers.
普林斯頓大學的David Card和Alan Krueger的實證研究，重振了1990年代有關最低工資的辯論。紐澤西州在1992年將最低時薪從4.25美元提高至5.05美元。鄰近的賓夕法尼亞州維持在4.25美元。兩位經濟學家見到案例研究自動送上門來，興奮不已，他們收集這兩州速食店在4月加薪前和數月後的就業資料。速食業似乎提供理想的研究條件，因為屬同性質行業且僱用非技術勞工。
The increase in the wage floor did not lead to jobs being lost in New Jersey; employment in the restaurants they looked at went up. Nor did the authors find any indication that the opening of future restaurants would be affected. Looking at the growth in the number of McDonald’s restaurants across America, they saw no tendency for fewer to open where minimum wages were higher.
提高工資下限並未導致紐澤西州的工作流失。他們觀察的餐廳就業人數反而上升。作者也未發現任何跡象，顯示未來餐廳的開業會受到影響。他們查看麥當勞餐廳在美國各地的展店數，發現最低工資調高的地區，並未見到減少開店的趨勢。
Their book, “Myth and Measurement” (1995), changed a lot of minds. By 2000 only 46% of AEA members were certain that a minimum wage increased unemployment among the young and low-skilled: to the rest the textbook view—that, faced with a rise in the cost of employing workers, firms would use fewer of them—was wrong. But why? Over the past 20 years a growing body of research has shown that a key consideration is the power enjoyed by employers.
他們合著的書《迷思與測量》在1995年出版，改變很多人的觀念。到2000年，只有46％的AEA成員確信，最低工資會增加年輕低技術工人的失業率。對其他人來說，錯誤的是教科書的觀點—公司面對勞工聘僱成本上升時，將僱用更少人。但為什麼錯呢？過去20年來，愈來愈多的研究文獻顯示，關鍵的考慮因素是雇主享有的權力。
This school of thought argues that some labour markets are characterised by a market structure known as monopsony. Under a monopolistic regime one dominant supplier sells to many buyers, whereas under a monopsonic regime, one dominant buyer purchases from many sellers. Just as a monopolist can set prices higher than would be the case in a competitive market, a monopsonist can set prices artificially lower.
這種學派主張，某些勞動力市場的結構有個特徵，稱為買方壟斷。在賣方壟斷的體制下，一個主導的賣方售貨給許多買方；在買方壟斷的體制下，一個主導的買方向許多賣方採購。獨佔市場的賣方，可以把價格訂得高於公平競爭市場的價格；同理，獨佔市場的買方，也可人為地壓低價格。
Thus, though it may sound counterintuitive for a higher wage to lead to more employment, it makes sense if what the legislation is doing is pushing a wage kept artificially low by monopsony back to where it would be in a market where supply and demand were matching each other freely. People who may not have bothered to look for a job at $10 an hour may be drawn into a job market offering $15 an hour. Push the minimum wage significantly beyond that point, though, and jobs will indeed be lost as companies find labour too expensive to afford.
因此，儘管「提高工資會帶來更多就業機會」也許聽起來有違常理，但若該法的立意是要把遭獨佔買方人為壓低的工資，推回在供需自由匹配市場應有的價位，就言之成理。懶得找時薪10美元工作的人，可能會被吸引到時薪15美元的就業市場。但是，若是把最低工資大幅提高到那個水準以上，工作機會的確會流失，因為公司發現勞力成本太高，負擔不起。
Once the role of competition in the labour market is accepted, the debate on minimum wages becomes more nuanced and more empirical. Gathering data is not easy. Researchers must consider whether to track jobs or workers, and whether to study certain groups, such as teenagers or the unskilled, or broader sectors. And the job market is affected by more than just minimum-wage rules. Constructing reasonable counterfactuals is hard.
一旦競爭在勞動力市場中的角色被接受，最低工資的辯論即變得更細膩和更具實證性。蒐集數據並不容易。研究人員必須考慮是否要追蹤工作或工人，以及是否要研究某些群體，例如青少年或非技術者或更廣泛的領域。影響就業市場的因素不只是最低工資規則而已。構建合理的反事實很難。
Specific north-west 獨特的西北部
Consider an example from Seattle. The city has been at the forefront of the “fight for $15” campaign that led to Mr Biden’s pledge, and its rapid wage rises have made it an attractive laboratory for economic studies, despite the fact, some grumble, that it is unrepresentative. A paper by Ekaterina Jardim and others at the University of Washington, published in 2017, found that minimum-wage increases in the city in 2015 and 2016 led to employers reducing hours in low-paid sectors. The average low-paid worker earned more per hour but, because they worked fewer hours, their monthly earnings dropped by $74—the equivalent of five hours’ pay.
思考西雅圖的例子吧，這座城市一直處於「為15美元奮戰」運動的最前鋒，導致拜登許下承諾。該市工資快速上漲，使它成為誘人的經濟研究實驗室，儘管有人抱怨不具代表性。華盛頓大學的Ekaterina Jardim等人在2017年發表的論文發現，2015年和2016年西雅圖的最低工資上漲，導致低薪行業的雇主縮減工時。一般低薪勞工的每小時收入增加了，但由於工時減少，每月收入下降74美元，相當於五個小時的工資。
That paper used aggregate data on hours and earnings by sectors. In a paper published in 2018, the same authors used administrative data to track individual workers rather than looking at averages. This time they found that low-paid workers saw their weekly earnings increase by $8-12 a week. The majority of that gain, though, was taken by low earners with above-median experience levels and some of it from workers making up lost hours worked in Seattle with additional hours elsewhere in Washington state.
該論文使用了部門時數和收入的匯總數據。在2018年發表的一篇論文中，同一群作者使用行政管理的數據來追蹤個別勞工，而不是查看平均值。這次，他們發現低薪勞工每周收入增加8-12美元。不過，大部分增加的收入是由經驗水平在中位數以上的低收入者獲得的，其中一些得自於勞工為彌補西雅圖工時減少，而在華盛頓州其他地方增加工時。
In 2019 a review commissioned by the British government of more than 50 recent empirical studies into wage floors found the effect on employment to be generally muted, even with relatively ambitious increases. Yet some studies did find higher impacts. Arindrajit Dube, the author of the review, warned that the evidence base is still developing. It is, for instance, too soon to opine on South Korea’s 25% increase in its minimum wage between 2016 and 2018.
2019年，英國政府委託審查了50多份關於工資下限的近期實證研究，發現對聘僱的影響大致溫和，即使工資增幅相對較大亦然。然而，一些研究確實發現了更大的影響。該審查的作者Arindrajit Dube強調，證據基礎仍在發展中。例如，現在就評斷韓國2016至2018年提高最低工資25％的影響，還言之過早。
The effects of a wage floor can also be felt outside low-pay sectors. A preliminary study in 2019 of the impact of Germany’s minimum wage found it led to more reallocation of workers from smaller, lower-paying firms to larger, higher-paying ones. The same year an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that the impact of minimum-wage laws on average earnings was amplified by small but important spillover effects higher up the earnings ladder. Employers tend to want to maintain some sort of wage differential for staff with more responsibility. So if the minimum wage boosts the pay of fast-food workers, then restaurants may also need to raise the pay of fast-food supervisors.
在低薪行業之外，也可以感受到最低工資的影響。 2019年一份對德國最低工資影響的初步研究發現，這導致更多勞工從規模較小的低薪企業，重新分配到較大的高薪企業。同年《經濟學季刊》的一篇文章發現，最低工資法對平均收入的影響被一種因素放大----細微但重要的收入階梯攀升溢出效應。雇主傾向為擔負更多責任的員工，維持某種薪資差距。因此，如果最低工資提高了速食店勞工的工資，那麼這些餐廳可能也需要為速食店主管加薪。
Who pays for the minimum wage? In theory a higher cost base could be passed on to consumers through higher prices, or absorbed by employers through lower profit margins. In reality the answer varies by market. In competitive sectors, such as fast food, research has found that a 10% increase in the wage floor pushes up burger prices by just 0.9%. In 2019 a study of supermarkets in Seattle found no impact on grocery prices from big increases.
誰支付最低工資？理論上，較高的成本基礎可以透過漲價轉嫁給消費者，或由雇主藉利潤變薄自行吸收。實際上，答案因市場而異。在競爭性行業如速食店，研究發現工資底限提高10％，僅會使漢堡價格上漲0.9％。在2019年對西雅圖超市的一項研究發現，大幅提高工資對雜貨價格沒有影響。
Economists no longer think higher minimum wages are always bad. But that is not the same as saying they are always good. In 2018 a paper by Isaac Sorkin and others cautioned policymakers to take a longer-term view, rather than worry about short-term unemployment. Its authors found that if firms perceived a higher wage floor to be permanent and unlikely to be eroded by inflation, it could encourage them to automate more and decrease employment growth in the future. The idea that a minimum wage can sometimes lead to higher rather than lower employment does not mean it always will. When pushing up the floor, policymakers need to ensure they do not hit the ceiling. ■
經濟學家不再認為提高最低工資總是壞事，但這也不表示都是好事。Isaac Sorkin等人在2018年發表的論文提醒，政策制定者應放長眼光，而不是擔心短期失業。該篇論文作者發現，如果企業認為較高的工資下限是永久性的，並且不太可能受到通貨膨脹的侵蝕，那麼可能會鼓勵他們實現更高的自動化，並降低未來的聘僱成長。最低工資有時可能導致就業機會升高而不是降低的想法，並不意味總是這樣。決策者在拉抬工資地板時，必須確定不會撞到天花板。 ■
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