Proposals for raising the minimum wage always have triggered vigorous discussion, with proponents as well as opponents providing reasonable arguments to bolster their respective positions.

But the hiring situation at this time in the U.S. economy’s small-business sector is revealing an evolving change in the minimum wage’s perceived importance — a change perhaps destined to remain embedded in smaller workplaces, and numerous larger ones, around the nation for the long term rather than being but a short-term deviation from usual rate-of-pay statuses quo.

“I don’t want to say the minimum wage has become irrelevant, but it has certainly become less relevant,” said David Neumark, a professor at University of California, Irvine, who was quoted in last weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, in the same WSJ edition, Arindrajit Dube, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, observed that the strong wages growth at the bottom of pay scales is “not being driven by minimum wages but rather by the tightness of the labor market.”

“High labor demand mutes minimum-wage bumps” was the headline of an article right below an article whose headline proclaimed that “Hiring gets easier for small businesses.”

The latter article reported small-business owners are saying it is getting easier to hire workers and keep them around, not only due to raising pay, but perhaps equally or more so due to apprenticeship programs, some competitors pulling back on hiring or beginning layoffs and companies rewriting job-availability ads or writing better new ones.

There are no reliable numbers yet on how small businesses in the six-county Southern Alleghenies region are faring in comparisons with what is happening elsewhere in Pennsylvania and in other regions across the nation.

It should be considered important to delve into that question, so the full range of small-business employment issues here can be weighed for revamping, or for possibly developing some new strategies.

It is safe to conclude that small-business owners here, like their “brothers and sisters” elsewhere, are hopeful that the worst of their labor problems are behind them, although it is too soon to know for sure.

Pandemic-related impacts seem to keep rearing their ugly heads in places around the world, just as the U.S. public becomes increasingly confident that the war against the coronavirus is close to finally being won.

The Journal’s “hiring-gets-easier” article notes the U.S. job market remains historically tight. However, December marked the first time since July when small-business owners said in a survey for the Journal they found it easier rather than harder to find workers.

But small businesses here and beyond face challenges involving years beyond the present, even if factors now seem magnetic in terms of attracting applicants.

Some big factors sometimes put on the back burner initially by job candidates amid the challenge of seeking out employment opportunities and then getting hired are considerations regarding a company’s long-term stability potential.

Those factors tie into issues surrounding possibilities for advancement or whether a job is or will be dead-end eventually, no matter how much promise it seems to offer now.

“Hiring gets easier for small businesses,” the Journal’s headline proclaims.

However, that might be a more precarious “easier” than has existed for a long time.