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Latinos and the Economy pp 169–191Cite as

The Minimum Wage and LatinoWorkers

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Part of the book series: Immigrants and Minorities, Politics and Policy ((IMPP))

Abstract

Latinos comprise a large and growing share of the low-skilled labor force in the US and may be disproportionately affected by minimum wage laws as a result. We compare the effects of minimum wage laws on employment and earnings among Hispanic immigrants and natives with effects among non-Hispanic whites and blacks. We focus on adults who have not finished high school and on teenagers, groups likely to earn low wages. Conventional economic theory predicts that higher minimum wages lead to higher hourly earnings among people who are employed but lower employment rates. Data from the Current Population Survey during the period 1994–2007 indicate that there is a significant disemployment effect of higher minimum wages on Latino teenagers, although it is smaller for foreign- than native-born Latinos. Adult Latino immigrants’ earnings are less affected by minimum wage laws than other low-education natives, and their employment rates appear to increase when the minimum wage rises. We investigate whether skill levels and undocumented status help explain these findings.

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Acknowledgement

We thank participants of the Latinos and Public Policy sessions at the Inter-University Program on Latino Research conference “SIGLO XXI: Economies of Class, Economies of Culture” (Austin, Texas, April 2007) for comments on this chapter. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or Federal Reserve System.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA

    Pia M. Orrenius

  2. Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA, USA

    Madeline Zavodny

  3. IZA – Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany

    Madeline Zavodny

Authors
  1. Pia M. Orrenius
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  2. Madeline Zavodny
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pia M. Orrenius .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Government, University of Texas, Austin, USA

    David L. Leal

  2. , Department of Economics, University of Texas, University Station 1, Austin, 78712-0301, USA

    Stephen J. Trejo

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Orrenius, P.M., Zavodny, M. (2011). The Minimum Wage and LatinoWorkers. In: Leal, D., Trejo, S. (eds) Latinos and the Economy. Immigrants and Minorities, Politics and Policy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6682-7_9

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