To watch an interview I did with Fox Business host Trish Regan on this topic, please click on this link: http://tinyurl.com/jf6jfk7
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of joining Fox Business host Trish Regan on The Intelligence Report to talk about the minimum wage increases that will hit 14 states this year. In a segment entitled, Can retailers handle higher minimum wage?, Trish referred to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that I wrote to explain the impact on Walmart’s bottom line of its voluntary base wage increase to $9 an hour. As I explain in the op-ed, the low profit per employee at retail companies makes it hard to absorb large wage increases through price increases, automation or more efficient labor scheduling. In other words, if businesses are unable to mitigate dramatic minimum wage increases, this ultimately means fewer entry-level opportunities for those who need them the most. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement for more dramatic increases unless, of course, the point is to kill entry-level jobs.
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