Bill 201 would have repeated the Notley-era minimum wage policy that led to declines in youth employment

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When the Alberta NDP’s minimum wage proposal died at second reading last November, the party leadership predictably cried foul, accusing the government of voting “against workers.”

But the evidence from California’s recent experience and Alberta’s own 2015 to 2018 experiment supports the government’s position: minimum wage mandates destroy the jobs they claim to protect, and they hurt young workers most of all.

Bill 201, an Alberta NDP private member’s bill, would have raised Alberta’s minimum wage from $15 to $18 over three years, while eliminating the youth wage differential (which allows employers to pay workers under 18 a lower minimum wage) to “restore fairness.” We’ve seen this movie before, and it ended with shuttered restaurants, unemployed youth, and workers worse off than they were before.

Raising the minimum wage may sound compassionate, but it leads to fewer jobs for young workers.
Image by Pablo Merchán Montes

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California raised fast-food wages from $16 to $20 per hour in April 2024. Ten months later, the sector had shed roughly 18,000 reported jobs. Workers who kept their jobs lost up to five hours per week, equivalent to about $4,000 in annual income.........

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