Research Discussion Paper – RDP 2018-06 The Effect of Minimum Wage Increases on Wages, Hours Worked and Job Loss

This ‘read me’ file contains details of the code and data included in this archive that were used to generate the results reported in RDP 2018-06. Plotting data for all figures appearing in the RDP can be found in the spreadsheet ‘rdp-2018-06-graph-data.xls’.

Data

The following data sources were used:

• Award wage data:
  • Obtained from the Fair Work Ombudsmen – not available for release
• Job-level WPI data:
  • Accessed during a secondment to the ABS – not available for release

Figure data

Figure 1–2: Public Availability Yes

The data files as used by the code referenced below are not included in this archive; as such, the code will not run.

Code

The results reported in this RDP were generated using Stata 13.0.

Included in this archive are the following programs:

• 1_clean_mujaa901.do
• 2_clean_mujaa902.do
• 3_clean_mujaa903.do
• 4_clean_jobdata1.do
• 5_clean_jobdata2.do
• 6_clean_jobdata3.do
• 7_clean_euewt1.do
• 8_clean_euewt2.do
• 9_clean_empdata1.do
• 10_clean_empdata2.do
• 11_clean_mueaa901.do
• 12_clean_mueaa902.do
• 13_clean_combined.do

These programs extract the relevant job- and employer-level data from the ABS's internal databases to create a longitudinal job-level file. These programs should be run in order (as indicated by the number prefix of each file).

The following two programs are also included:

• 14_flat_dollar.do
• 15_flat_dollar_transitions.do

14_flat_dollar.do uses the longitudinal file to estimate the effect of award wage increases on wages and hours worked. Fri15_flat_dollar_transitions.do is used to generate estimates for the probability of job destruction.

Finally, 16_award_histogram.do uses data on wage rate for award classifications to construct Figure 1.