New York State ranked #38 of states with the best hiring environments, according to a report by Gallup. If N.Y. State Department of Labor (DOL) has it’s way, it may fall to dead last by 2021.
Politico New York reported Wednesday that the Empire State’s DOL published their formal rules to increase the minimum wage for fast food workers to $15 an hour by the year 2021.
The DOL is assuring people that Gov. Cuomo’s minimum wage hike will not have a substantial negative impact on job creation or employment opportunities in the fast food sector, citing a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute.
“I don’t suspect that this will result in a loss of jobs because I think that the increased wages that are going to be paid to employees are going to be put right back into the local economy and create more demand for goods and services, which would increase jobs, not decrease jobs,” said Ron Deutsch, the executive director of FPI.
Not everyone is on board with the plans, the Business Council of New York is annoyed that BOL ignored concerns from business groups when making their decision.
“It’s interesting that they’re taking the FPI report as gospel and then virtually dismissed the testimony of the employers and their representatives,” said BCLNY spokesman Zack Hutchins to Politico.
The proposal says that most losses will be minimal because the phase in period is six years long and if businesses could just “increase sales” if they start to see a negative impact–oh is that all?
It’s obvious that none of those people actually ever ran a successful business before.
Of course, there will be massive job layoffs. Fast food companies around the world are already starting to replace human labor with robots.
The Foundation for Economic Education said in an article that new immigrants and millennials will suffer the most from the wage increase, because businesses are less likely to hire new labor in favor for old labor that’s already been trained on the job.
“Less experienced workers — especially unskilled immigrants and young people starting out in the job market — will also lose. Businesses will try to offset some of higher cost of labor by cutting hours or jobs, delaying or cancelling expansions, replacing labor with capital where they can, and replacing less skilled with more skilled workers where they can’t.” wrote Daniel Bier of the FEE.
The Washington Post also noted that McDonalds has reduced it’s labor size per restaurant by nearly 50 percent since the mid-1960’s. Robots are already beginning to replace workers in the form of kiosks and tablets at chains like Olive Garden and Panera.
Vastly expanding the cost of labor when value has declined steadily is no recipe for job creation, and it looks like the Empire State may see low-skilled labor see their low-paying jobs get replaced by Rosie the robot.
