[miley_cyrus]

This group is well known for bias, over and over through the years. Nothing they report should be taken at face value.

"A considerable amount of financial support for the Center comes from labor unions: According to federal reports, over the last 15 years it has received nearly $1.2 million in labor funding."

"The IRLE’s highest-profile researcher is Michael Reich, who co-chairs its Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. Reich made a name for himself at a young age co-founding the Union for Radical Political Economics, with the stated goal of supporting “public ownership of production and a government-planned economy.”"

https://us.fundsforngos.org/news/nonprofit-accuses-uc-berkel... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te... https://epionline.org/release/biased-uc-berkeley-research-te...

[waffleiron]

In contrast the study that's linked by OP is funded by:

Amazon, giant banks, ExxonMobile, Google, Microsoft, investment firms.

https://www.nber.org/about-nber/support-funding

[Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe]

Well unions are not for profit so even if they funded a study they don't have as strong incentives to influence the study's outcome. That's different from when the study is founded by for profit entities. No?

[Spivak]

You have made a good case for a close reading of the study. Are they wrong? Is the methodology bad?

[magicmicah85]

This is based on my very quick reading of the studies so take with grain of salt. The NBER study (OP) studied the entire fast food worker industry using data from BLS, whereas the Berkley study cautions against using BLS because it applies to the entire industry. The $20 minimum wage requirement only applied to fast food workers who work at limited service restaurants with 60 or more chains.

If your concern is only for who the $20 minimum wage was supposed to affect, then there was likely no decrease in jobs based on only that data. However, since causes have effects on more than one intended group, it's very likely that the $20 increase did reduce employment overall and the Berkley study was very careful to downplay that data as not being useful for the purposes of their study, even though they are related. The effects on one part of the industry can affect the rest and to ignore it is a questionable choice.

[AuryGlenz]

Even their abstract seems biased:

"...and price increases of about 1.5 percent— or about 6 cents on a four-dollar hamburger."

Ah, yes, the fabled four-dollar hamburger. I know I never need to spend more than 4 dollars nowadays when I get fast food.