IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v80y2014i3p633-655.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of the Tipped Minimum Wage on Employees in the U.S. Restaurant Industry

Author

Listed:
  • William E. Even
  • David A. Macpherson

Abstract

According to federal law in 2013, employers can take a credit of up to $5.12 for tips received by workers in satisfying the minimum‐wage requirement of $7.25. This article uses interstate variation in laws regarding tip credits and minimum wages to identify the effects of reducing or eliminating the tip credit on employment, hours, and earnings in the U.S. restaurant industry. Using data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and the Current Population Survey, we find that a reduction in the tip credit increases weekly earnings but reduces employment in the full‐service restaurant industry and for tipped workers. The results are robust to controls for spatial heterogeneity in employment trends and are supported by a series of falsification tests.

Suggested Citation

  • William E. Even & David A. Macpherson, 2014. "The Effect of the Tipped Minimum Wage on Employees in the U.S. Restaurant Industry," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(3), pages 633-655, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:80:y:2014:i:3:p:633-655
    DOI: 10.4284/0038-4038-2012.283
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.4284/0038-4038-2012.283
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.4284/0038-4038-2012.283?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    2. Allegretto, Sylvia & Dube, Arindrajit & Reich, Michael, 2010. "Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? Accounting for Heterogeneity and Selectivity in State Panel Data," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt7jq2q3j8, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    3. Joseph J. Sabia & Richard V. Burkhauser & Benjamin Hansen, 2012. "Are the Effects of Minimum Wage Increases Always Small? New Evidence from a Case Study of New York State," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(2), pages 350-376, April.
    4. Alan B. Krueger & David Card, 2000. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1397-1420, December.
    5. William Wascher & David Neumark, 2000. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1362-1396, December.
    6. Kenneth A. Couch & David C. Wittenburg, 2001. "The Response of Hours of Work to Increases in the Minimum Wage," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 68(1), pages 171-177, July.
    7. Daniel Aaronson & Eric French, 2007. "Product Market Evidence on the Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 167-200.
    8. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1992. "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on the Fast-Food Industry," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 46(1), pages 6-21, October.
    9. Sylvia A. Allegretto & Arindrajit Dube & Michael Reich, 2011. "Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? Accounting for Heterogeneity and Selectivity in State Panel Data," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 205-240, April.
    10. Daniel Aaronson & Eric French & James MacDonald, 2008. "The Minimum Wage, Restaurant Prices, and Labor Market Structure," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(3), pages 688-720.
    11. Dube, Andrajit & Lester, T. William & Reich, Michael, 2010. "Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt86w5m90m, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    12. Lawrence Katz & Alan Krueger, 1992. "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on the Fast Food Industry," Working Papers 678, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    13. Joseph Sabia, 2009. "The Effects of Minimum Wage Increases on Retail Employment and Hours: New Evidence from Monthly CPS Data," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 75-97, March.
    14. Wessels, Walter John, 1997. "Minimum Wages and Tipped Servers," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(2), pages 334-349, April.
    15. Kenneth A. Couch & David C. Wittenburg, 2001. "The Response of Hours of Work to Increases in the Minimum Wage," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(1), pages 171-177, July.
    16. John Anderson & Orn Bodvarsson, 2005. "Do higher tipped minimum wages boost server pay?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(7), pages 391-393.
    17. Burkhauser, Richard V & Couch, Kenneth A & Wittenburg, David C, 2000. "A Reassessment of the New Economics of the Minimum Wage Literature with Monthly Data from the Current Population Survey," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(4), pages 653-680, October.
    18. Arindrajit Dube & T. William Lester & Michael Reich, 2010. "Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(4), pages 945-964, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Loukas Karabarbounis & Jeremy Lise & Anusha Nath, 2022. "Minimum Wages and Labor Markets in the Twin Cities," NBER Working Papers 30239, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Joseph J. Sabia & Richard V. Burkhauser & Taylor Mackay, 2018. "Minimum Cash Wages, Tipped Restaurant Workers, and Poverty," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 637-670, October.
    3. Sylvia Allegretto & Carl Nadler, 2015. "Tipped Wage Effects on Earnings and Employment in Full-Service Restaurants," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 622-647, October.
    4. David Neumark & Maysen Yen, 2023. "The employment and redistributive effects of reducing or eliminating minimum wage tip credits," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(4), pages 1092-1116, September.
    5. Dale Belman & Paul Wolfson & Kritkorn Nawakitphaitoon, 2015. "Who Is Affected by the Minimum Wage?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 582-621, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arindrajit Dube & Attila S. Lindner, 2024. "Minimum Wages in the 21st Century," NBER Working Papers 32878, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. David Neumark & Peter Shirley, 2022. "Myth or measurement: What does the new minimum wage research say about minimum wages and job loss in the United States?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 384-417, October.
    3. John Schmitt, 2015. "Explaining the Small Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage in the United States," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 547-581, October.
    4. Dale Belman & Paul Wolfson & Kritkorn Nawakitphaitoon, 2015. "Who Is Affected by the Minimum Wage?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 582-621, October.
    5. Matthew T. Gustafson & Jason D. Kotter, 2023. "Higher Minimum Wages Reduce Capital Expenditures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(5), pages 2933-2953, May.
    6. Kim, Jiyoon & Levere, Michael & Magenheim, Ellen, 2025. "Do minimum wage increases induce changes in work behavior for people with disabilities? Evidence from the AbilityOne program," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    7. Loukas Karabarbounis & Jeremy Lise & Anusha Nath, 2022. "Minimum Wages and Labor Markets in the Twin Cities," Working Papers 793, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    8. Laura Giuliano, 2013. "Minimum Wage Effects on Employment, Substitution, and the Teenage Labor Supply: Evidence from Personnel Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 155-194.
    9. Micheli, Martin, 2016. "Minimum wage: Redistributive or discriminatory policy?," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145830, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Laporšek, Suzana & Orazem, Peter F. & Vodopivec, Milan & Vodopivec, Matija, 2024. "Long-term responses to large minimum wage shocks: Subminimum and super-minimum workers in Slovenia," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 48(4).
    11. Even, William E. & Macpherson, David A., 2012. "The Effect of Tip Credits on Earnings and Employment in the U.S. Restaurant Industry," IZA Discussion Papers 7092, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Link, Sebastian, 2024. "The price and employment response of firms to the introduction of minimum wages," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    13. Yonezawa, Koichi & Gómez, Miguel I. & McLaughlin, Edward W., 2022. "Impacts of Minimum Wage Increases in the US Retail Sector: Full-Time versus Part-Time Employment," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 47(2), May.
    14. Kate Rybczynski & Anindya Sen, 2018. "Employment Effects Of The Minimum Wage: Panel Data Evidence From Canadian Provinces," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(1), pages 116-135, January.
    15. Katharine G. Abraham & Melissa S. Kearney, 2020. "Explaining the Decline in the US Employment-to-Population Ratio: A Review of the Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(3), pages 585-643, September.
    16. Peter McHenry & Jennifer M. Mellor, 2022. "The Impact of Recent State and Local Minimum Wage Increases on Nursing Facility Employment," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 345-368, December.
    17. Alessandra Brito & Miguel Foguel & Celia Kerstenetzky, 2017. "The contribution of minimum wage valorization policy to the decline in household income inequality in Brazil: A decomposition approach," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(4), pages 540-575, October.
    18. Mario Bossler & Hans-Dieter Gerner, 2020. "Employment Effects of the New German Minimum Wage: Evidence from Establishment-Level Microdata," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 73(5), pages 1070-1094, October.
    19. Lordan, Grace & Neumark, David, 2018. "People versus machines: The impact of minimum wages on automatable jobs," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 40-53.
    20. Justin C. Wiltshire, 2023. "Walmart Supercenters and Monopsony Power: How A Large, Low-Wage Employer Impacts Local Labor Markets," Department Discussion Papers 2304, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:80:y:2014:i:3:p:633-655. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.