Now, it's reasonable to point out that skilled laborers are basically fully employed right now, so the proposal would marginally reduce the supply of skilled labor hours -- and could thereby reduce skilled output.
But FWIW I don't think that's a very good point. Skilled labor is not really hour-limited in the same way that unskilled labor is -- that is, the output of a salaried full-time knowledge-worker employee is unlikely to change much (certainly not by 12.5%) if the standard workweek drops from 40 hours to 35. That's not how knowledge jobs work and that's not how salaried positions work. Whereas productivity in unskilled positions really would drop by somewhere close to 12.5% under the proposal. (Which is good; it opens up more of these "job" things that are so crucial to wealth distribution in the modern world.)
At any rate, if shorter work weeks for skilled workers bothers you that much, there's an easy solution: just say that you can only pay the minimum wage for the first 35 hours of the week, after which you have to pay at least 1.5 * minimum wage. Leave everything else the same. (Well, I like the parent's minimum wage hike too.) Now we're only cutting the output of near-minimum-wage workers.
I'm not at all sure that this idea wouldn't be disastrous, but I can't think of any good reasons that it might be. I feel like it's the most obvious way out of the current economic situation.
