Market Intervention - Essay Example

The prime argument for the initiation of minimum wages has been the removal of economic disparity. As it has been observed time and again that the poor workers have been deprived of the minimum facilities and benefits by the employers all over the globe, the concept of minimum wages aimed to end the economic oppression. United Kingdom has not been an exception either. It was in the year of 1999 that the government of United Kingdom (led by the Labour Party) introduced the minimum wage. The initiation of the ‘National Minimum Wage’ is considered as one of the most significant interventions by the government in the labour market.

The other major party of the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party which opposed the minimum wage previously in 1991, also vouched for the cause since 2005. The major objective of the minimum wages has been the rise of standard of living of the working class of the society (Center for Economic Performance, “Policy Analysis”). Prior to the implementation of minimum wages, the concerned quarters of the industry speculated that the installation of minimum wages might reduce up to two million of jobs alone in the market of United Kingdom.

It was so predicted because it was estimated that the employers will reduce the number of posts as they would have to pay minimum wages for any new employment and therefore, they would rather try to extract more work from those who already have higher wage. But the various research reports prepared in the subsequent years proved such speculation to be impractical as there was no reported news of spillover. The implementation of minimum wage proved to be extremely beneficial to the female workforce of the United Kingdom.

Also, it was observed that the implementation of such wage structure contributed to increase of wage for about 5% to 6% of the workforce of the United Kingdom during the initial years.