Part of the reason for minimum wages is that by eliminating bad jobs (the ones seemingly not worth paying people for), it can save time and effort for workers w

Part of the reason for minimum wages is that by eliminating bad jobs (the ones seemingly not worth paying people for), it can save time and effort for workers who accidentally take those jobs when they could have found better ones. This is called search effects. Another related one is that it can increase your competitiveness with other countries, basically by making employers stop wasting time and think of more productive things for people to do. But the main reason they can help is that, insofar as employers are monopsonies (sole payers of wages), they often literally don't know what wages they "should" pay because they don't have any incentive to find out, and in that case setting a higher minimum wage actually causes everyone to become more employed.