does not have a $20/hr. minimum wage (source: http://www.wageindicator.org/main/salary/minimum-wage/australia). What Australia does have is a 16.87AUD/hour minimum which translates (at the current exchange rate) into 14.84USD/hour (AUD and USD are acronyms respectively for “Australian Dollar” and “US Dollar”). Furthermore, there are all sorts of caveats that apply; for example, there’s a schedule of minimum wages (expressed as a percentage of the 16.87AUD/hour baseline) based upon the age of the worker:
| <16 years: 36.8% |
AUD6.21 |
USD5.46 |
| 16 years: 47.3% |
AUD7.98 |
USD7.02 |
| 17 years: 57.8% |
AUD9.75 |
USD8.58 |
| 18 years: 68.3% |
AUD11.52 |
USD10.13 |
| 19 years: 82.5% |
AUD13.92 |
USD12.24 |
| 20 years: 97.7% |
AUD16.48 |
USD14.49 |
For more on the economics of the minimum wage, I recommend reading the attached article by David Neumark; Dr. Neumark is an economics professor and director of the Center for Economics and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine.
Who Really Gets the Minimum Wage, by David Neumark.pdf]]>
Published by Jim Garven
My name is Jim Garven. I currently hold appointments at Baylor University as the Frank S. Groner Memorial Chair of Finance and Professor of Finance & Insurance. I also currently serve as an associate editor for Geneva Risk and Insurance Review.
At Baylor, I teach courses in managerial economics, risk management, and financial engineering, and my research interests are in corporate risk management, insurance economics, and option pricing theory and applications.
Please email your comments about this weblog to James_Garven@baylor.edu.
View all posts by Jim Garven
