The effect of the minimum wage on hiring behaviour

在过去的十年里，最低工资作为一种政策工具在西方国家越来越受欢迎，作为一种减少收入不平等、确保雇主定期给工资最低的工人加薪的方法。2022年4月，国家生活工资（支付给22岁以上的人）上涨了59便士（6.6%），而学徒最低工资上涨了11.9%。这是英国历史上最低工资涨幅最大的一次。博士项目将利用这一难得的机会，使用计量经济学分析来估计最低工资与企业招聘行为之间的关系。该项目将使用招聘网站上的职位空缺数据，包括专门针对学徒的数据，来回答以下问题：英国最低工资的变化对职位空缺率的影响是什么？这在地理区域和部门之间有何不同？最低工资对各种福利或限制的广告数量有什么影响？最低工资率的提高在多大程度上影响了提供给学徒的非工资福利，例如培训的数量和质量？这篇论文将是第一篇利用在线招聘广告分析最低工资影响的研究，它将利用一个比传统调查数据有显著优势的原始数据集。除了分析最低工资对职位空缺率的影响外，该数据集还提供了一个独特的机会，可以研究雇主如何以微妙的方式调整提供给工人的总体就业方案。我将使用使用网络抓取技术从两个在线招聘广告服务收集的每周数据：findajob.gov.uk和findapprentice.gov.uk。前者包含任何职位的广告，而后者专门用于招聘学徒。除了工资率和工作角色等标准变量外，收集的数据还包括准确的工作描述、工作小时数和工作的精确地理位置。与其他数据集（如劳动力调查、年度工时和收入调查或学徒薪酬调查）相比，这一新颖的数据集提供了对最低工资对劳动力市场影响的更高层次的洞察。在这样做的过程中，我希望分析将弥合经济理论和经验证据之间的差距，当涉及到最低工资和就业之间的关系。经济学家历来对最低工资持谨慎态度，因为理论预测，在竞争激烈的劳动力市场上，最低工资将减少就业。然而，检验最低工资对就业水平影响的实证文献是广泛的，并最终在英国达成共识，即最低工资增长对就业的影响微不足道，或者至多是边际效应。鉴于这种明显的不匹配，本研究将重点关注雇主可能通过哪些机制来适应与最低工资相关的成本增加。在第一章中，我将分析提高最低工资对空缺率的影响。在搜索摩擦存在的情况下，可能是更高的最低工资意味着公司更有可能留住和招聘工人，从而降低职位空缺率。这将有助于解释为什么提高最低工资对就业水平的影响明显可以忽略不计，甚至是积极的。该项目将继续侧重于提高最低工资对提供给全职工作人员和学徒的非工资福利的影响。为了保护企业不因提高最低工资而增加成本，可以减少这种福利。这也解释了为什么观察到的最低工资和就业存量之间的关系与理论不一致。

Over the past decade, minimum wages have become increasingly popular as a policy tool across Western countries, as a method of reducing income inequality and ensuring employers give regular pay increases to their lowest-paid workers.In April 2022, the National Living Wage (paid to those over 22) rose by 59p (6.6%) meanwhile the apprentice minimum wage rate rose by 11.9%. These are the largest increases in the minimum wage in the UK's history. The PhD project will exploit this exceptional opportunity, using econometric analysis to estimate the relationship between the minimum wage and the hiring behaviour of firms.The project will use data on job vacancies from job posting websites, including data specific to apprentices, to answer the following questions:1. What is the effect of a change in the UK minimum wage on the job vacancy rate? How does this differ across geographical regions and sectors?2. What is the effect of the minimum wage on the number of ads specifying various benefits or restrictions?3. To what extent does the increase in the minimum wage rate affect the provision of non-wage benefits, such as the quantity and quality of training, provided to apprentices? The dissertation will be the first study to analyse the effects of the minimum wage using online job ads and it will utilise an original dataset that has significant advantages over traditional survey data. As well as allowing an analysis of the effects of the minimum wage on job vacancy rates, this dataset provides a unique opportunity to examine how employers adjust the total employment package offered to workers, in often subtle ways.I will use weekly data collected from two online job advertising services using web scraping techniques: findajob.gov.uk, and findapprentice.gov.uk. The former contains adverts for any jobs while the latter is used exclusively to advertise vacancies for apprentices. In addition to standard variables such as the wage rate and the job role, the data scraped will include the exact job description, the number of hours worked, and the precise geographic location of the job.This novel data set provides a higher level of insight into the impacts of the minimum wage on the labour market than other data sets such as the Labour Force Survey, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings or the Apprentice Pay Survey. In doing this I hope the analysis will bridge the gap between economic theory and empirical evidence when it comes to the relationship between minimum wages and employment. Economists have traditionally been wary of minimum wages since theory predicts that they will reduce employment in a competitive labour market. However, the empirical literature examining the effects of the minimum wage on levels of employment is extensive and has culminated in the consensus in the UK that a minimum wage increase has an insignificant or, at the very most, marginal effect on employment. Given this apparent mismatch, this research will focus on other mechanisms through which employers might accommodate the cost increases associated with the minimum wage. In the first chapter, I will analyse the effect of an increase in the minimum wage on the vacancy rate. In the case where search frictions exist, it could be that a higher minimum wage means that firms are more likely to be able to retain and recruit workers, reducing the job vacancy rate. This would help to explain why increases in the minimum wage have apparently negligible, or even positive, effects on employmentlevels.The project will proceed to focus on the effect of minimum wage increases on the provision of non-wage benefits provided to both those with full-time jobs and apprentices. Such benefits could be reduced in an attempt to protect firms from increasing costs as a result of a higher minimum wage. This would also explain why the observed relationship between minimum wages and employment stocks isn't consistent with the theory.