Finance Columnist: If Raising the Minimum Wage Hurts Everyone’s Bottom Line, It’s Okay

How Raising the Minimum Wage Would Benefit McDonald’s and Walmart (Yahoo! Finance)

You’re not likely to hear the CEO of any company that employs a lot of low-wage workers saying the minimum wage ought to be higher. But if it were, such companies might turn out to be unlikely beneficiaries.

The minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour at the federal level, is getting renewed attention as a weak recovery proceeds without many new jobs that pay enough to support a family. Today’s protests against fast-food chains such as McDonald’s (MCD), Wendy’s (WEN) and Taco Bell (YUM) in dozens of cities are a new phenomenon, since low-paying fast-food and retail jobs used to dominated by young people likely to move onward and upward. As such jobs have become a better-than-nothing career for 30- and 40-somethings, pressure has grown for employers to raise pay so their workers can enjoy a decent standard of living.