Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

American counties and cities have, over the past two decades, begun passing ordinances increasing the local minimum wage above that of the federal and state minimums. The effect that wage floor increases have on industry, and employment, growth is a fiercely debated topic within Economics, with the most recent literature focusing on city-level or historical state-level wage policy. County-level minimum wage ordinances offer a new avenue for studying wage floor effects on employment. Using data from the US Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, synthetic controls were created for four counties that implemented wage floor increases by the mid-2010s. Based upon comparison of fast food industry employment in the four treated counties and their synthetic control groups, wage floor increases were not found to substantially affect job growth, in a majority minimum-wage paid industry, either immediately or up to three years after implementation. What these findings suggest for current research on minimum wage policies, and the direction of future research should take, is discussed.