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Comment by donmcronald | Hacker News Reader

Why would you have 10 workers if the job can be done by 9? There wouldn't be 10 workers to start with in your fake scenario.

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Generally speaking, you should have more employees than the bare minimum required to operate. That way, you have enough staff available to, say, cover when someone calls in sick, gets in an accident and takes short-term leave, goes on vacation, quits unexpectedly, etc.

When wages are already close to the marginal value add, increasing the wage floor means needing to cut hours. When wages are not, then increasing the wage floor has little effect on hours or people hired. If there's already sufficient buffer, it might even result in fewer jobs over time as companies attempt to get by with less wiggle room in headcount.

Just a thought.

You’re also assuming that there is no price elasticity. When all parties see the cost of resources go up, the prices go up or margin goes down.

Anyplace with a geographic monopoly demonstrates this. Rest Areas, large institutions and places like airport usually require a cut of the gross sales are part of the lease agreement.

I know of one where that cut is 15%, but the restaurant charges a 30% premium since it is also a near monopoly within the institution. People are still buying coffee and burgers.

If you can manage with 9, but do better with 10. It’s not like starbucks needs three people behind the counter; its just a hell of a lot smoother and faster order processing, and better service in general (eg cleaning more consistently)

> Why would you have 10 workers if the job can be done by 9?

Because not all work is the same. If you clean the equipment weekly it breaks down less often than cleaning it monthly. If the cost of an employee increases then the cost of more employees can exceed the cost of more equipment failures, so you cut staff (or hours).

Sounds like that one guy should look for a job at the equipment factory.

Unless the primary cost of the equipment failing is lost business from having to clean it during operating hours, without any profit going to the manufacturer.

Most dev teams above 4 or 5 probably could do the same amount of work if one of their co-workers got the axe. But it'd probably come at the expense of other factors: employment fatigue, tech debt, less reliable quality.

Or of course the response is: sure I’ll work 20% more hours, what is the comp?

This doesn't seem relevant, as the article is about minimum wage.

It is relevant. I think the implication of the commenter two layers above was that the 10th worker wouldn't be fired because if 9 workers were sufficient the business would have only hired 9 in the first place. This may not always be correct. 9 works may indeed be sufficient, but at wages lower than the mandated minimum the 10th worker is better. For that reason, a wage hike can indeed cause workers to lose employment.

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