Bilbao (EFE).- The Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 2021, the Canadian David Card, affirms that raising the minimum wage “almost does not affect employment”, a thesis that he maintains against those who assure that increasing the SMI destroys jobs.
The economist David Card has been one of the participants in the international meeting on the Future of Employment that is being held in Bilbao, under the organization of the Basque Government.
Card has dealt with the relationship between economic research and policy implementation through two subjects that he has studied in depth in his academic career: the economic impact of immigration on receiving countries and the rise in the minimum wage.
In his speech, he defended the validity of the studies on the minimum wage that he carried out in the 1990s with the economist Alan Krueger in pioneering research. Its increase “barely affects employment,” he pointed out.
He has been pleased that the general perspective in relation to the minimum wage has changed and that “they are used more and more” in different countries.
As he has indicated, the SMI was introduced in Germany around 2016 and the measure “seems that it has not ended employment” in the country, he has revealed.
Immigration and its impact on wages
The professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley has also pointed out that academic research has influenced the policies adopted in relation to the minimum wage, but it has not happened in the same way with studies on the impact of immigration in receiving countries. .
According to his research, focused on the US sphere, of which he is most knowledgeable, “the concern” that immigration contributes to lower wages “is not sustained.”
As he has defended, on the contrary, “there are many advantages in a larger and more active market, which has immigrants.”
quality employment
The Vice-Hendakari and Minister of Labor and Employment of the Basque Government, Idoia Mendia, participated in the inauguration of this meeting, who called for a “new business and trade union culture” with “new attitudes” to face the challenges and transformations that the Basque Country needs and has called to “get out of inertia”.
It has also underlined its commitment to quality employment and decent wages.
At the opening, the European Commissioner for Employment and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, and the three Vice-Presidents of the Government of Spain: Nadia Calviño, Yolanda Díaz and Teresa Ribera, briefly intervened by video.
All of them have agreed on the importance of investing in quality employment.
“It is possible to build a new model on new pillars to create quality employment and do so on the basis of a healthy and responsible business fabric,” said Díaz, who explained that the burden of temporality and precariousness must be left behind.
Redesign industrial policy
During the conference, the White Paper on Employment in the Basque Country was presented, which proposes the redesign of industrial policy with an “employment perspective”, so that technologies that generate improvements in productivity and in the quantity and quality of employment are rewarded. .
He also advocates “monitoring” wage inequalities in the Basque Country, which a study says have increased since the 2008 crisis, particularly due to the greater loss of purchasing power of people with lower incomes.
The work is committed to generating a favorable environment for the creation of companies, promoting incentives to increase the participation of the workforce in the decisions of the companies, seeking the permanent training of workers and prolonging working life, among other measures. EFE
