Re:America has never gone this long without hiking the feder...
by dangus on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @02:47PM
(#20226066)
It's more nuanced than this, in my view. It's not just "high minimum wage bad for teenagers!"
There are a lot of reasons for decreased teenage employment:
- Older employees who should be retired hanging on to jobs longer because they can't afford retirement
- Students finding part time work an inferior return on investment compared to college preparation and other resume-building activities like volunteer work
- College costing so much that high school summer jobs can't possibly pay for a significant fraction of it, essentially making it a less time efficient option than just using future wages to pay for it (loans)
I do think that it might make sense to have a lower teenage minimum wage than the normal adult minimum wage. I personally don't assume that a low minimum wage is good for low-skill employees, that just doesn't add up to me.
The inability to pay a living wage equates to all of us not paying the real cost of a good or service.
There are a lot of reasons for decreased teenage employment:
- Older employees who should be retired hanging on to jobs longer because they can't afford retirement
- Students finding part time work an inferior return on investment compared to college preparation and other resume-building activities like volunteer work
- College costing so much that high school summer jobs can't possibly pay for a significant fraction of it, essentially making it a less time efficient option than just using future wages to pay for it (loans)
- Lengthened academic years with shorter summers
https://www.apnews.com/66a5d6cade1743fb897aad56e300c99c
I do think that it might make sense to have a lower teenage minimum wage than the normal adult minimum wage. I personally don't assume that a low minimum wage is good for low-skill employees, that just doesn't add up to me.
The inability to pay a living wage equates to all of us not paying the real cost of a good or service.