Does an increase in the minimum wage affect Jobs growth...Yes, but it's not statistically significant

A lot of press at the moment about the decision to increase the minimum wage by 3% or so. Business claiming it will cause some grief in regards to employment.

So I grabbed some info from the ABS around growth in "Employed Australians" and GDP (seasonally adjusted), grabbed the updates to the minimum wage from Fair Work and did a basic regression.

Couple of assumptions
1. Assumed that the June 30 was the end of the year.
2. Growth in GDP was for the year (July - June)
3. Growth in Employed Australian's was for the Year (July- June)
4. Tried a couple of regressions, with a few lags.
5. MinWage increase takes affect on July 1st

Best model was Jobs Growth = 0.34*GDP + 0.32*GDP (year before) - 0.1*MinWage Growth(year before)

Adjusted R2 = 0.28, ANOVA F Stat p value = 0.08.

GDP and GDP (year before) statitsically significant at the 89% level (not 95% level) and Minwage growth (year before) only significant at the 78% level

So really, you would have to say that Job growth it is more about GDP than minimum wages. Which is true.

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