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SeedPublished 2026-10-23

Minimum wages and the machines that replace the minimum-wage job

The minimum wage appears on 34 recent papers in the economics and finance journals, but only 2 of 44 minimum-wage papers carry an automation, robot or technology keyword. Self-checkouts, kiosks and warehouse robots are cheapest where wages are highest. Do minimum wage increases speed up automation, and over what horizon?

economicslaborautomation

What prompted this

Since October 2025, 44 papers carry a minimum-wage keyword (35 in economics journals, 8 in finance), with "minimum wage" on 34. Only 2 of them also carry an automation, robot, technology, capital-labour or self-service keyword, while "labor demand" appears on 32 papers and industrial robots are a rising topic elsewhere.

Questions

  • After large minimum wage increases, do firms in affected areas buy more automation equipment and post fewer low-wage jobs, with a lag of years rather than months?
  • Which tasks go first, and do the remaining jobs pay more or require more skill?
  • Do the employment effects found in short-run studies understate long-run effects that run through automation?

Data that could help

Minimum wage changes by state and country, equipment investment and job postings by establishment, and robot or kiosk adoption from supplier data.

Next step

Relate state minimum wage changes in the US to the share of restaurant and retail job postings that mention self-service technology over the following three years.

Related research activity

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
KeywordPapers, last 30 daysRankPapers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*Papers, last 36 months
minimum wage1#288175
labor demand3#77686

Markdown version of this note: /ideas/minimum-wages-and-automation.md

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Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Minimum wages and the machines that replace the minimum-wage job. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/minimum-wages-and-automation

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-minimum-wages-and-automation,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Minimum wages and the machines that replace the minimum-wage job},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/minimum-wages-and-automation}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

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