Crain's New York Business reports:
Has New York’s minimum wage experiment been a success or failure?
For Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the verdict is all positive. He described the state’s minimum wage—which in New York City rose to $15 an hour Dec. 31—as a “national example in the fight for economic justice.”
But employment figures paint a less-rosy picture.
New York has more than a dozen different minimum wage rates depending on a business’s size, industry and location. The state's wage level accelerated at the end of 2015, after a wage board empaneled by Cuomo increased the base wage for tipped employees by 50% overnight. A similar wage board for fast-food employees subsequently approved a $15 minimum for that industry; this was followed by a statewide mandate that also rose to that level.
The anecdotal evidence on these increases' negative impact is substantial. Lacking the ability to pass costs on to their customers, dozens of businesses have reported scaling back or closing their doors following the state’s wage hikes. Countless more have done the same without attracting media attention. (Many of these stories are featured on my organization’s website, FacesOf15.com.)
There's more:
The empirical data lends support to New York City business owners' concerns about labor costs. The state Labor Department reports data on region-specific employment growth, derived from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Employment Statistics dataset. For full-service restaurants, robust year-over-year employment growth that reached nearly 9% in November 2013 cratered to less than 1% by November 2018. The full-service restaurant industry in New York City is on track to finish 2018 with zero growth.
For you rookies out there: the demand for labor always a downward sloping curve. Always.
