This study estimates the employment effects of industry‐specific, collectively bargained minimum wages in Germany for two occupations associated with the construction sector. I propose a truly exogenous control group in contrast to the control group design used in the literature. Further, a difference‐in‐differences‐in‐differences estimator is presented as a robustness test for occupation‐specific and/or industry‐specific, time‐varying, unobserved heterogeneity. I do not find a significantly negative employment effect, even though the minimum wage is binding in (East) Germany. Possible explanations include substitution effects, non‐compliance and models of monopsonic competition.