Raising the minimum wage increases the disposable income for the employed. You are making the assumption that an increase in minimum wage does not decrease the

Raising the minimum wage increases the disposable income for the employed. You are making the assumption that an increase in minimum wage does not decrease the employment rate. Your particular country may be benefiting from a commodities export boom, free-money level interest rates, or any number of other internal or external factors, which allow employers to get by fine with raising the minimum wage. Perhaps they had huge margins already, the customers can eat the increase in cost, CEOs are enjoying a stock market boom and don't dare to let their companies growth stall, whatever. In an economic contraction things aren't so rosy. We have a unique situation now where minimum-wage level employees are increasingly competing with machines. Increasing both the minimum wage and labor costs just expedites the progression of this trend.