Time: 2014/2/12 19:25:53
Abstract: With the continuous increasing of minimum wages in China from 474 yuan in 2004 to 1072 yuan in 2011 on average, the impact of MWs on migrant workers' wages needs to be reevaluated. Contrast to other OECD countries, the regulated MWs in China did not specify the legal working hours. Employers may extend the workers' working hours to compensate the increased costs. This paper employs a large migrant household survey and some municipal data to investigate the impact of MWs increasing on migrant workers' wages by considering the working hours. The results show MWs only have small negative impacts on migrants' employment and its impacts on rural female workers are larger than other groups. What is more, only the employment of rural migrant workers with low qualifications will be affected by MWs' increase, but not urban migrants. Without controlling working hours, MWs' increase will improve rural migrants and West migrants' wages. However, MWs' increase intensifies rural male workers' working hours, therefore it has no significant impact on migrant workers' wages after considering working hours and employment effect.