Sowell: Minimum wage madness leads to rising unemployment

[Keith and stuff]

Perhaps we can look at something like this. First, a chart of states with highest/ lowest minimum wages.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/states-highest-lowest-minimum-wages/story?id=16330751

http://www.economicpopulist.org/category/topic-meta-tags/state-unemployment-map

Seems pretty mixed- likely factors other than minimum wage effecting the unemployment picture in most states.

The map is old. While NH doesn't have high unemployment like the 5 southern states without a min. wage, for most workers, it also doesn't have a state min. wage. So yes, NH doesn't have a min. wage and should be yellow in the first map. That's the absolute best a state can be.

 

[gwax23]

I think Las Vegas at least was one of the hardest hit when the housing bubble burst. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there is not decent correlation between how hard a state was hit by the housing collapse and the 2012 unemployment rate.

Any takers?

Definitely played a role. It also has a higher minimum wage than the federal.