That the minimum wage is a measure capable of generating more unemployment is a belief rooted in standard economic theory. He confirms it Lorenzo Rocco, full professor of Economic Policy at the University of Padua, who we asked to explain why this is in fact a false myth.
The inconsistency of this dynamic was first demonstrated by David Card who «won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2021 precisely for one of his studies on the application of the minimum wage in which he went to see the effect of this introduction on young people who worked in American fast food restaurants ».
The reason why he was convinced of this lies in one of the best known dynamics of the economic world, that of supply and demand. “According to standard economic theory, if a minimum wage is introduced, there should be fewer firms willing to hire workers at that salary on the one hand, and more workers interested in a job at that salary on the other. The difference between these two elements should lead to higher unemployment ”.
But in fact this is not the case, and Card proved it by analyzing young people with occasional contracts in the restaurant world. “Here the introduction of the minimum wage had no negative effects on employment. Indeed, in some cases a small positive effect has been observed ». And since the study of the first Nobel Prize, many economists have tried to justify what can be considered an anomaly. “The possible explanations are various: the first is that labor markets are not subject to a pure logic of supply and demand.”
The minimum wage in the Italian panorama: advantages and risks
For years there has been discussion of a possible introduction of the minimum wage in our country as well. The United States, the paradise of the free market, were among the first to introduce it, and Germany followed them in Europe in 2012. Yes, we already have the National Collective Labor Agreements (CCNL), an all-Italian specificity that it already regulates the wage levels of our labor market. With two important MAs. «The first is that there are several professions not covered, not included in the CCNL. They also don’t take into account the differences between north and south. The wages provided for in these contracts are the same, although the cost of living is very different. It would therefore be better to have a minimum wage which is in any case a homogeneous measure at national level against poverty, but then to leave the system free to adapt wages to actual living conditions. Conversely, there is a risk of having wages, as sometimes happens with the CCNL, too low in the north and too high in the south ».
In addition to obvious advantages, however, there are also possible darker evolutions, however not linked to the goodness of this idea. We refer to the undeclared work. Let’s take a totally invented example to explain it better: I as an employer who before the minimum wage could pay you 6 euros gross per hour, now that the law obliges me to give you 8, maybe I propose (in some cases I impose) to pay you in black the 6 that were previously gross. “To be honest, my hypothesis is that this is exactly what could happen in Italy in the short term. Especially because there is no sufficiently sharp control system»Concludes Rocco.
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