I often wonder why those who argue for increasing the minimum wage are so dismissive of the people who will be hurt by their plan. There’s no doubt that hiking the wages for some will be a benefit to that group. But what about the people who won’t be hired or who won’t get the raise they’ve earned through stellar performance or productivity because there’s simply no more money to go around? What about them? We hear crickets from the Left on this undeniable fact.

In today’s Daily Journal, JLF’s John Hood brings us more data on the negative impacts of raising the minimum wage when there is no increase in productivity/value.

Thanks to two other economists, Andrew Hanson of Marquette University and Zackary Hawley of Texas Christian, we now have a reasonable estimate of how President Obama’s proposed minimum-wage hike would affect North Carolina’s labor market. Their paper, just published in the Journal of Labor Research, takes into consideration differences in preexisting wage rates and living costs across the states. It shows that raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour, as the administration and Democrats in Congress want to do, would eliminate as many as 1.5 million jobs nationwide.

Here in North Carolina, Hanson and Hawley estimate a low-bound job loss of 7,312 and a high-bound loss of 46,100 from their main model. Alternative models also produce sizable effects, some nearing 50,000 lost jobs.

Fairness requires me to point out, however, other workers would gain from the policy. They’d get more pay. Minimum wages act as a kind of income redistribution — kicking some workers to the curb in order to pay other workers more. But the welfare gains aren’t apportioned in a way that left-wing supporters of the policy ought to like. Middle-income whites boosting their discretionary incomes are disproportionately among those who gain. Lower-income black and Hispanic youngsters who may well need their jobs to meet their family’s basic needs are disproportionately among those who lose.

The best way to boost the wages of low-skilled workers is to boost the productivity of their labor. Better tools and equipment are one answer. Better education and training are another. Also keep in mind that on-the-job training can’t happen unless someone is, indeed, on the job. So making it attractive for entrepreneurs to start new firms and businesses to hire more workers will help, too.