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，作为一种缩小收入不平等和确保雇主定期给最低工资工人加薪的方法。2022年4月，全国最低生活工资(支付给22岁以上的人)上涨了59便士(6.6%)，而学徒最低工资标准上涨了11.9%。这是英国历史上最低工资的最大增幅。博士项目将利用这一特殊机会，使用计量经济学分析来估计最低工资与公司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，包括针对学徒的数据，来回答以下问题：1.英国最低工资的变化对职位空置率有何影响？不同地理区域和部门之间的差异如何？2.最低工资对说明各种福利或限制的广告数量有什么影响？3.最低工资率的提高在多大程度上影响向学徒提供的非工资福利，如培训的数量和质量？这篇论文将是第一个使用在线招聘广告分析最低工资影响的研究，它将利用一个原始数据集，该数据集比传统调查数据具有显着优势。除了能够分析最低工资对职位空置率的影响外，这个数据集还提供了一个独特的机会，来研究雇主如何以通常微妙的方式调整提供给工人的总就业方案。我将使用从两个使用网络抓取技术的在线招聘广告服务收集的每周数据：findajob.gov.uk和findappree.gov.uk。前者包含任何职位的招聘广告，而后者则专门用于招聘学徒。除了工资率和工作角色等标准变量外，收集到的数据还将包括准确的工作描述、工作时数和工作的准确地理位置。与劳动力调查、工时和收入按年调查或学徒工资调查等其他数据集相比，这一新颖的数据集提供了更高水平的洞察最低工资对劳动力市场的影响。通过这样做，我希望这一分析将在最低工资与就业之间的关系上弥合经济理论和经验证据之间的差距。经济学家传统上对最低工资持谨慎态度，因为理论上预测，在竞争激烈的劳动力市场上，最低工资将减少就业。然而，考察最低工资对就业水平影响的经验文献很多，最终在英国达成共识，即提高最低工资对就业的影响微乎其微，或者至多是微不足道的。鉴于这种明显的不匹配，这项研究将重点放在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置率的影响。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，从而降低职位空置率。这将有助于解释为什么最低工资的提高对就业水平的影响显然是微不足道的，甚至是积极的。该项目将继续关注提高最低工资对向有全职工作的人和学徒提供非工资福利的影响。这种福利可能会减少，以保护公司不受更高的最低工资导致的成本增加的影响。这也解释了为什么观察到的最低工资和就业股票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.