Thanks are due to Combest for linking to this article about Missouri’s minimum wage, which slowly continues to go up. The new minimum will be $6.65 an hour.

That doesn’t seem like much, and I’m not predicting mass layoffs in response. But little changes can add up to make a difference. For example, employers might respond to a small minimum wage increase by requiring their employees to be a little more productive, perhaps by spending less time training them to do new tasks. In the short term, the employee earns a little bit more an hour. But he could miss out on learning new skills that would have enabled him to earn much higher wages in the future.