Minimum Wage Increases and Vacancies

Using a unique data set and novel identification strategy we explore the effect of state-level minimum wage increases on firms' existing new vacancy postings. Utilizing occupation-specific county-level from Conference Board's Help Wanted Online for 2005-2018, show that lead to substantial declines in postings occupations with larger share workers earning around prevailing wage. Our estimate implies 10 percent increase binding reduces vacancies by 2.4 contemporaneously, could be as large 4.5 year later. The negative is more pronounced where generally have lower educational attainment (high school or less) those counties higher poverty rates.