Raising the Minimum Wage Won’t Reduce Inequality

Walmart is giving more than one million of its employees a raise later this month as part of a plan that will lift all but its newest hires to at least $10 an hour. The move, first announced last year, follows an aggressive campaign to get the largest private employer in the U.S. to lift worker wages and coincides with a nationwide push to raise federal and state minimum wages and a prolonged period of little growth in pay. While Walmart’s decision is at least in part a result of that pressure, it’s still the action of a private company to revamp its own wage policies, as opposed to the result of a government forcing it to lift worker pay. Proponents of requiring just that argue raising the minimum helps reduce inequality. Critics contend it can actually worsen it by driving up unemployment and weakening economy-wide labor market flexibility by raising the costs firms face.