March 29, 2021 ☼ labor ☼ economy ☼ minimum-wage
Source: POLITICO - Link
Taxpayers often pay the price: Government aid to underpaid workers, in the form of Medicaid, nutrition assistance and other government programs, amounts to more than $100 billion a year. Meanwhile, for employers (and their investors), what goes around comes around. Low pay reduces productivity; financial insecurity makes it hard to focus and be productive. It also fuels high employee turnover, which further lowers productivity and reduces customer satisfaction. This can cost large companies tens of millions of dollars a year.
The article advocates for pay disclosure. In some ways this makes sense since it gives labor an incentive to compete for higher paying jobs and employers some incentive to invest in retention and worker health. I’m not sure how this would pan out in practice.