Should Restaurants Worry About Minimum Wages?

Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way to test the restaurant industry's warnings that a higher minimum wage will lead to fewer jobs? We can't tell the future (even at Bloomberg), but we can use federal jobs data to do the next best thing: examine the impact of previous minimum wage increases on employment levels. That data doesn't do much to support the industry's claims.

Since 1990, the federal minimum wage has risen seven times. If the arguments of restaurant owners were accurate, you'd expect those increases to correspond with a drop in the number of people working at restaurants, as restaurants react to higher labor costs by firing people.