Dr. Frank Walsh:

As I tried to indicate earlier, in general the research on the effects of the minimum wage on employment and hours has not found that there is never any evidence that any firm reduces employment or hours. There are many reports, and certainly some of the reports that we have commissioned, that have found no evidence of reductions in hours. There was one report we found that showed there was a reduction in hours for temporary workers but it did not last past the first year of the increase. There were other reports. We looked at regional effects and we did not really find any statistically significant effects. It is certainly not true to say that there is no evidence that there is ever any subset that would reduce hours in response to the minimum wage. I think we have to look at the overall impact across firms and look within, as we have done for the temporary workers and so on. Our recommendations are based on a broad reading of the evidence. We are certainly not making a definitive statement that somebody cannot come up with a study that shows some group of workers had reduced hours. There are studies out there that show some other workers had an increase in hours, for example.