Minimum wage gets healthy lift

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Via the AFR:

The Fair Work Commission has increased the minimum wage by 3.3 per cent, lifting weekly rates by $22.20 from July 1.

The increase raises the minimum wage from $17.70 to $18.29 an hour or $694.90 per week and is substantially more than the 2.4 per cent or $15.80 a week increase granted last year.

President Justice Iain Ross, who heads the seven-member annual wage review panel, said on Tuesday that previous reviews may have been “overly cautious” as to the negative effects on employment from minimum wage increases.

He said international research had “fortified our view that modest and regular wage increases do not result in dis-employment effects”.

“That research also suggests that the panel’s past assessment of what constitutes a ‘modest’ increase may have been overly cautious, in terms of its assessed disemployment effects.”

Good job.

Now, cut immigration so that per capita number can lift:

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.