On June 16, 2026, Oklahomans will vote on State Question 832, an initiated state statute that would increase the minimum wage in Oklahoma to $15 over a few years. Worse yet, it would mandate automatic increases in the future by tying our state’s minimum wage to a national index. “Basically,” says OCPA president Jonathan Small, “the wages paid in Gotebo, Oklahoma, would be tied to the cost of living in places like San Francisco and New York City.”

You’ll notice that SQ 832 doesn’t propose increasing the minimum wage immediately. Instead, it proposes increasing the minimum wage gradually to $15 per hour in 2029. Why?

The answer is easy. The catastrophic effects of immediately increasing the minimum wage would be too obvious. By increasing the minimum wage a little at a time, the job losses, business closures, and increased prices for basic goods and services appear to be more mysterious. They happen more gradually. Consequently, people fail to connect the increase in the minimum wage to the economic hardship they see around them.

The minimum wage is a price control. A price control is any time the government imposes a price, whether it’s to keep a price higher than what would be determined by people acting freely in a market setting or to keep a price lower than what would be determined by people acting freely in a market setting. The minimum wage is called a “price floor” by economists because it’s a price control keeping the price of labor from falling (like a floor keeps you from falling lower) to where free people would determine labor’s value.

Price floors cause surpluses, partly by reducing demand for the good that’s price-controlled.

That is, the minimum reduces demand for labor. More specifically, it reduces demand for low-skilled labor, the sort that’s provided by teenagers; the sort that teaches the newly employed important skills like the importance of showing up on time, how to interact with coworkers, how to interact with customers, and how to please a boss. The minimum wage reduces the number of entry-level jobs where the unskilled learn skills while on the job, while being paid, instead of having to pay someone to teach them in a school. 

Actually, the minimum wage doesn’t just reduce the demand for unskilled labor. It reduces the demand for higher-skilled labor as well. Think about what will happen when lower-skilled wait staff and cleaning staff in restaurants see their wages artificially increased. Prices in restaurants will have to increase in an effort to compensate for higher costs. When that happens, many of us will reduce how much we eat out. Some restaurants will have to close. That means the skilled and relatively well-paid cooking staff will lose their jobs, right along with the lesser-skilled.

During President Ronald Reagan’s term of office, the federal minimum wage never increased, which meant inflation had the effect of reducing the minimum wage in real terms. By 1986, an article in The Wall Street Journal noted that teenage employment of blacks and white females had increased markedly. As their unskilled labor became more affordable, their employment potential exploded.

I recall a full-service car wash, the likes of which I’d never seen before, opening in the late 1980s. As an automated system transported a car through the car wash, teens inside the car were wiping down the interior and cleaning the inside of the glass. Once out of the wash, an exterior wipe-down and some quick vacuuming saw you reclaiming your now-clean car in only about 20 minutes, all for a remarkably reasonable price. Then, George H.W. Bush was elected, and his resistance to a minimum-wage hike was nil. The minimum wage increased, and almost overnight, car washes as described here and teenage employment evaporated.

Perhaps it seems trivial to drive around in cars that aren’t as clean as they could be, or to work in shops void of floor sweepers beginning their apprenticeships. But I bet it was significant to the kid with a plan for a legitimate career who, instead, got thrown out on his ear. What are his options at that point? A school he can’t afford? As likely, it might just mean turning to something illegal.