2 ms·

Increasing wages will just take employees from somewhere else. It will not just magically increase the supply of workers in the country by a significant amount.

• stevenicr 8y ago
  'a significant amount' I suppose depends on the location and situation. Just adding 12,000 employees to our medium city would certainly be a big impact for several businesses here. Certainly if everyone doubled the wages here more people would come from other states, and more people would come from an hour away that would not otherwise. It would also bring a lot of people to the workforce that are already here but not willing to work for half of what it costs to live. Whether that is considered magical or not I suppose depends on where you stand as an employer who is losing money because they are not able to be open their posted hours (steak and shake here for example) - or an employee willing to work, but literally can not afford rent, food and transportation, or someone who is being objective and not really affected by any of these things. Everything is booming indeed, rents, cost of housing and cars, taxes. I think a lot of people want to participate that can not afford to.