Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research, The Exchange (Yahoo! Finance), September 9, 2013

The fast food industry has put its lobbyists into hyper-drive. Their concern is the growing public support for striking workers at the major chains who are demanding $15 an hour. The lobbying groups argue that this sort of pay hike would inevitably backfire, leading to job loss and higher unemployment.

I’ve taken a special interest in this argument since I have apparently become a prop in their efforts, being cited as an economist who agrees that there would be job loss from a sudden increase in wages in the industry to $15 an hour. Undoubtedly there would be somewhat fewer jobs in the industry if wages doubled for low-end workers, but to seriously assess the merits of the policy we need to do a bit more arithmetic.