"Minimum wage workers should mainly be..."

Because you say so? Or do you have thoughts on specific policies that will make this true? Because currently, many people who need to support a household rely on minimum wage jobs (or close to it), and often without guaranteed full time hours and no health insurance.

Minimum wage workers are only a few percent of the American labor force, and about half of them are under 25. Only about 20% were between 35 and 55.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2018/pdf/home....

I'd say 20% is not a small number! I'd also point out that "just above minimum wage" isn't much better than minimum wage. For example, if you work for many large chains that pay minimum wage you're likely to get a raise at some point. That raise may take you from, say, $10.00/hr to $10.50/hr. Hurrah!

I think a better metric might be (minimum wage + (20% * minimum wage)). That snags all those people who work at "minimum wage jobs" but have stuck around for a few years and gotten a few small pay increases, but are still being paid a wage that is a function of minimum wage.

Just riffing here to be honest, but I do get a little uppity when people claim minimum wage jobs are just for teenagers or other "less important" wage earners. Part of this was from working in retail and food service when I was much younger and knowing a lot of adults, many single parents, working for close to minimum wage. Anecdotal, I know.

Well what percentage of these are non-breadwinners? Could it be stay at home parents who are making supplementary income?

> I think a better metric might be (minimum wage + (20% * minimum wage)). That snags all those people who work at "minimum wage jobs" but have stuck around for a few years and gotten a few small pay increases, but are still being paid a wage that is a function of minimum wage.

Yes, there needs to be better information.

> Just riffing here to be honest, but I do get a little uppity when people claim minimum wage jobs are just for teenagers or other "less important" wage earners. Part of this was from working in retail and food service when I was much younger and knowing a lot of adults, many single parents, working for close to minimum wage. Anecdotal, I know.

This is terrible, and just goes to show my point -- we need to be tracking the important number: how many people who need to afford rent for a separate unit (usually those with dependents but not always) cannot afford to do so.

EDIT: Here are some stats on low-wage workers by age. It does show a good distribution, but I think we need to make the tails thinner: https://www.statista.com/statistics/298866/percentage-of-low...

The more interesting data is low-wage workers. Making 10c over the minimum wage would pull you out of that report.

No, because this is the policy outcome government should seek, not a uniform raising of the minimum wage.

> Or do you have thoughts on specific policies that will make this true

No I don't... but I'm curious in solutions to this problem, rather than 'solutions' to minimum wage jobs.

> Because currently, many people who need to support a household rely on minimum wage jobs (or close to it), and often without guaranteed full time hours and no health insurance.

Yes... i know. We need to formulate policies that make this not true, so that the group I said should make up the majority of min wage workers actually comprises the majority.

Not only is it no crime for young people to have low wage jobs it could be of benefits in learning. No one can pay someone to learn anymore because its to expensive to even if you find a young person willing to learn and a business owner willing to teach.

Australia does something interesting - minimum wage scales with how old the person is. Say it's $15/hr for 18 year olds; 19 year olds get $16 as a minimum, and so forth.

Curious what you think about that idea.

There are some laws like this in the US. Some are state based, but some are federal...

"...a special minimum wage of $4.25 per hour applies to employees under the age of 20 during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer"

"Other programs that allow for payment of less than the full Federal minimum wage apply to workers with disabilities, full-time students, and student-learners employed pursuant to sub-minimum wage certificates. These programs are not limited to the employment of young workers."

https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/003.htm?_ga=2.219...

I think it's certainly better than the alternative, but I would like to see minimum wage dropped for the youngest ages honestly. So much good experience could be had if the youngest and those just about to embark on their career could get some experience.

But I'm mainly interested in non-minimum wage solutions. There are even good reasons for adults to work for less than minimum wage. Think of non-volunteer tasks that a stay at home parent may be interested in working in part-time but still would like to make a modest income for.

Why wouldn’t that cause someone to discriminate against an older person?

Exactly. Minimum wage jobs should be jobs that require little skill. They should be easy to train people for, and employers should expect a high turn over rate as their employees find better jobs.

Unfortunately, that is not how things work in the real world. Many people simply have been unable to find better paying jobs. And the old way of working your way through college doesn't work. Both because college is so expensive, and because it no longer guarantees a high paying career.

Plus there are people who have just had life screw up everything for them. Whether because they made bad choices or just suffered the consequences of someone elses bad choices.

So what can we change? I'd argue that raising the minimum wage will do little to help. I remember someone, who overall supported that idea, reporting that their research showed the long term effect would be negligible since the cost of goods would just go up until the buying power of the minimum wage was back where it started.

I also think the focus on the minimum wage is because it is a simple idea and politicians can use it to gain votes.

I think the real solution is going to be complicated, and take decades. It would include strengthening peoples support structures.

As in when you need help, you have a family or group of friends who help you. I think current American culture encourages broken families and the idea that your friends should go to the government first. Not to you.

Also, as a Christian, I firmly believe the Church in America should be a LOT more active in this area. We do good work a lot of the time, but we can do a lot better.

Then there's education and choosing a career. Currently everyone goes to college. End result is that a degree doesn't mean anything any more, and people who choose to forgo college can be looked down upon. A cultural change that addresses that is need. (See MikeRoweWorks for some ideas.)

And we need a restructuring of our current welfare systems. I remember seeing data showing that the government spends something like $60,000 a year on each recipient. Then I see the private non-profits that get people into life long careers on budgets much smaller than that. What's that definition of insanity? ;)

Anyway, just a few thoughts. I don't believe I have all the answers, just that it is a very complicated problem, and we shouldn't let politicians and activists buy our votes with overly simplified ideas like "raise the minimum wage."

Hmm wonder why you are getting downvoted for a well-written question about what data is important.

It's kind of an underhanded trick where the guy is redirecting the conversation to something else. I'd probably prefer that people meet him head on and debunk him instead of downvoting him into oblivion, but I don't blame people for just booting his bad-faith argument out of the conversation.

To meet with the comment head-on: You assert that nobody is supporting a family on minimum wage, so there's no reason to increase the minimum wage or have social welfare programs that help people on minimum wage.

That's not true. A lot of people are stuck at minimum wage and supporting themselves and supporting families on it.

You can go off the rails here and assert that "Any competent adult should be able to ..", and maybe it's true. But that argument is a VERY slippery slope. Personally, I think that anyone posting on this site SHOULD be able to go out and snag a job that pays well over 400k a year if they work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Actually I think that most of the people here should be able to start a valuable startup and become millionaires. I'm not going to roll in and take a dump on someone if they can't pull it off, though.

It's not an underhanded trick. Please respond to the most charitable interpretation of my comment, as per HN guidelines.

> To meet with the comment head-on: You assert that nobody is supporting a family on minimum wage, so there's no reason to increase the minimum wage or have social welfare programs that help people on minimum wage.

That's not at all what I'm trying to insinuate. I even said that:

> I'm most interested in what percentage of those with dependents are working minimum wage jobs and what percentage of those that started out with minimum wage jobs have been unable to increase their earnings. MY guess is that these numbers are also terrible, but this is the thing to get down.

I literally said that I bet the numbers that I'm interested in will likely show that there are too many people with dependents working minimum wage jobs. That doesn't mean we shouldn't track the data. That is what shows us what will help.

Please respond in good faith.....