Teens Need Summer Jobs. Too Bad There Aren’t Many.
Stephen Moore / @StephenMoore / July 06, 2014
School’s out, and I’m terrified my two teenage boys won’t get a job this summer and will sit around watching TV, playing computer games or just eating me out of house and home. Idle hands really are the devil’s workshop, and at this stage, I’d pay an employer to get the kids out of the house and teach them some practical lifetime skills.
My first job was working at a warehouse for $2.35 an hour in suburban Chicago. The first job for me – and many others – was one of the most important.
But in many areas this summer, kids won’t have an easy time finding work. The teen unemployment rate is already above 20 percent in many areas. Meanwhile, Seattle just became the latest city to raise its minimum wage – to double the minimum and all the way to $15 an hour. If you aren’t worth $15 an hour, it is now illegal for you to hold a job in Seattle. The White House wants to raise the federal minimum from $7.25 to $10.10 over the next several years.
Many California cities and at least a dozen states are talking about creating a similar “super” minimum wage above the federal minimum. The idea is to reduce income inequality and raise wages for workers at the bottom of the scale.
The debate rages about whether this will actually raise wages or simply make it nearly impossible for the young to find paid work. Some liberals argue that raising the minimum wage will increase employment. In other words, making workers more expensive will evidently make employers hire more of them.
But we don’t have to debate what the effect of a higher minimum wage will have on young people. We already know from recent history. In 2007 and 2008 the minimum wage was raised three times. This wage hike requirement came at the worst possible time – just as the U.S. economy was entering recession. The effects on teen employment were immediate and devastating. The national teen unemployment rate nearly doubled. At one point during the recession in 2009, the black teen unemployment rate was nearly 50 percent, which is the rate in many third-world nations.
Also, teenage work participation plummeted to below 40 percent. In other words, as jobs became scarcer, teens either couldn’t get a job or just gave up even trying to find one. The lasting impact of this high teenage unemployment and low entry into the workforce is sharply negative. Wages later in life are higher when the young work earlier.
Skeptics say the teen unemployment rate soared only because the economy was in recession and jobs were hard to come by for every age group. True, but the teen rate rose fastest. They were the first tossed out of jobs. And as labor economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University has shown, when jobs are scarce, the solution to reducing unemployment is to allow employers to offer lower wages temporarily, not to raise the wage requirement, which only exacerbates the jobless problem.
We know about half the workers earning the minimum wage are below the age of 25. Very few minimum wage workers are the head of a household or the primary earner. Most minimum wage workers receive a pay raise within six months on the job. This is a training wage. Only about one in 20 workers is paid the minimum wage and the median wage is three times the minimum, or $24 an hour.
I love my sons (sometimes I don’t like them, though), but few employers would pay them $10 or $12 or $15 an hour. They just don’t have the skills to merit that kind of wage. Wouldn’t it be better for kids to have a job that pays $5 or $6 an hour than no job at all?
The victims of a higher minimum wage are the young and the unskilled. They are left on the jobs sideline when the wage requirement rises. This is why my own work finds that states with high minimum wages actually have MORE income inequality than those with lower minimum wages.
With about 17 million Americans out of work, not looking for work or just unable to find a full-time job, now is the worst time to raise the minimum wage. But if we do, at least let us have a federal teen minimum wage of $5 an hour. Call it a Training Wage. Let kids learn how to become productive and learn vital job skills at a young age.
This on-the-job training will pay off double or triple in the future as these teens turn into adults. It will also keep kids out of trouble this summer. There is something much worse than a minimum wage job and that is laziness, which doesn’t pay a penny.
Tag: Minimum wage
Summertime Blues: Teen Unemployment in Major U.S. Cities Tops 50 Percent
Summertime Blues: Teen Unemployment in Major U.S. Cities Tops 50 Percent
June 2, 2014 – 4:16 PM
By Penny Starr
(CNSNews.com) – A new analysisby the Employment Policy Institute (EPI) shows that unemployment among teens without a high school diploma is more than 50 percent in two of the largest U.S. cities.
Using U.S. Census Bureau data from May 2013 to April 2014, the analysis reveals that in Riverside-San Bernardino area of Southern California, the unemployment rate for teens ages 16 to 19 years old who don’t have a high school diploma is 54.2 percent.
In the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Ore., metropolitan area, the unemployment rate from that population is 53.8 percent.
“These numbers are staggering,” Michael Saltsman, director of research at EPI told CNSNews.com. “Teens across the country this summer are missing out on valuable work experience as they continue to suffer through an extended period of high unemployment and difficult job prospects.”
https://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/summertime-blues-teen-unemployment-major-us-cities-tops-50-percent
McDonald’s Workers Arrested at Protest Near Headquarters
McDonald’s Workers Arrested at Protest Near Headquarters
More than 100 McDonald’s (MCD) employees and some labor and clergy members were arrested after protesting for increased wages near the fast-food chain’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois.
The event, the latest in a series of demonstrations by workers demanding $15-an-hour pay and the right to form a union, began at 1 p.m. local time yesterday, on the eve of McDonald’s Corp.’s shareholder meeting.
About 2,000 protesters, including about 325 McDonald’s workers in restaurant uniforms, stormed though the company’s campus entrance at Jorie Boulevard and Kroc Drive in Oak Brook, according to the organizers, holding signs that said, “We Are Worth More” and “My Union My Voice.” The Oak Brook Police Department estimated the number was 1,000 to 1,500.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-21/mcdonald-s-tells-employees-to-stay-home-as-protests-loom.html
Readers say pay is commensurate with the skill-level involved
Readers say pay is commensurate with the skill-level involved
I know its cold and heartless, but if you want to make more money, its up to you to aim a bit higher than a minimum wage job. And if you continue to earn minimum after experience on the job, consider yourself at the pinnacle of your potential.
There is nothing wrong with that, and certainly pride in a hard day’s work – but you shouldn’t expect things handed to you that aren’t earned. The consumer will be the one who pays – taken to an extreme, just look at the it cost to take the family to a sporting event to help pay the salary of someone who is fortunate enough to have the talent to simply hit or throw a ball.
The pay is commensurate with the skill-level involved. It’s work that is at the lowest level of human performance, and as such, it is intended for teenagers and those that are looking to get their start on the working ladder of life, coming from the lowest levels of acedemia. How on earth this job got to be mainstream, where parents now see it as some kind of way to support their families, and then complain that it isn’t enough, is beyond me.
If you are truly at that stage in your life when you have taken on the responsibilities of having your own family, then for goodnesss sake, take some steps to make the appropriate changes in your working skills. Don’t load up on these family responsibilities and then expect your employer to somehow pay you more just because you increased your own responsibilities. The market should always be the determining factor in how much people are paid. If you don’t like it, then step aside. There are literally millions who are only too eager to take your job.
US: Two Views of Declining Labor Force Participation
US: Two Views of Declining Labor Force Participation
Ridgewood NJ, Here is an interesting economics view of the US labor force participation decline from head economist at Citi.
The interesting thing is that there are quite a few forces at work; older population, kids staying in school longer or going for higher degrees, women opting out, etc. Most important is the last point, the BLS projects it will continue to decline for another 10 years.
US: Two Views of Declining Labor Force Participation
1●It’s Temporary. Drop in labor force participation (LFPR) since 2007 reveals cyclical effect of unemployment previously masked by dominant demographics and too brief recessions.
–Downturn in LFPR associated with surge in long-term unemployed
–Correlation at state level between rising unemployment and falling LFPR.
–Large increase in discouraged workers, non-participants who want a job.
–Job-finding rates fell proportionately for recent and long-term jobless.
●Delayed response (increase) to falling unemployment implies that LFPR will rise strongly for several years after the economy reaches full employment.
2-●No, it’s Permanent. Major part of LFPR drop reflects mix of demographic, structural and other policy effects that may be only partially reversed over only a very long period.
–Population shifting to less-attached cohorts, including older, still prime-age workers.
–LFPR among prime-age women falling since 2000, high marginal tax rates at low incomes.
–Rising education enrollment.
–Accelerating trend in disabilities suggests more permanent hysteresis effect.
–Recent declines in discouraged workers and ‘not in labor force who want a job’
BLS projects that LFPR will decline another 1.5 percentage points by 2022.
Two Ways to Hurt Women in the Workplace
Obama looks to close wage gap while paying female staffers less than men
Two Ways to Hurt Women in the Workplace
Amy Payne
April 8, 2014 at 6:30 am
Today is “Equal Pay Day” for those who believe that The Man is keeping women down.
Convincing people that injustice is taking place is a great way to push your policy agenda—and that’s where “Equal Pay Day” comes from. It’s the left’s claim that women in America are paid only about 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.
But as Foundry Senior Contributor Genevieve Wood has explained, that talking point comes from creative—not accurate—comparisons.
The problem with the 77 percent statistic, calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau, is that it doesn’t compare the salaries of women and men in the same profession. Instead, it lumps all professions together. So, if high school teachers make less than congressmen (talk about something that ought to be fixed!), and there are more women who are teachers and more men in the U.S. Congress, then yes, the numbers will show that men make more than women. But if you compare the salary of a congresswoman to a congressman, guess what? They make the same.
In fact, sex-based discrimination in the workplace has been illegal since 1963. And since then, “Women have not only caught up to men in many professional endeavors; single, young women are outperforming their male counterparts in urban areas,” says Heritage’s Romina Boccia, the Grover M. Hermann Fellow. “No surprise there, as women already earn more bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees than men do.”
Equal Pay Day is supposed to be about boosting women, but President Obama and his allies are taking the opportunity to push two policy proposals that would hurt women (and men) in the workplace.
1. Raising the minimum wage.
The White House is pushing the idea that a minimum wage increase would help women, because women make up the majority of the workforce in several low-wage industries. What that actually means, however, is that hiking the minimum wage would deal a blow to women—since those are the jobs that would be lost with a wage hike. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would kill off 500,000 jobs—and the Employment Policies Institute projects that 57 percent of those jobs are held by women.
2. Mandating “paycheck fairness.”
Another bad idea Congress has rejected in the past is surfacing again: the “Paycheck Fairness Act.” But a law already exists that prohibits discrimination based on a worker’s sex—it’s called the Equal Pay Act, and it’s been law since 1963. So what would the Paycheck Fairness Act do for women’s pay?
Heritage labor expert James Sherk explains that the proposal is more about inviting lawsuits than anything else.
the PFA allows employees to sue businesses that pay different workers different wages—even if those differences have nothing to do with the employees’ sex. These lawsuits can be brought for unlimited damages, giving a windfall to trial lawyers.
How would it hurt workers? Well, you can’t get a raise for being a high-performing employee—male or female—if it’s mandated that everyone with the same job title makes the same salary. Sherk notes the downward pressure it would put on pay:
Companies should be allowed to reward good performance without risking a lawsuit. Punishing companies that do not adopt uniform pay scales would cut the wages of both men and women.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he will bring up both of these policies this week, and President Obama is signing executive orders that will increase the amount of information available about federal contractors’ salaries in the name of “equal pay.”
It’s policies like this that are keeping all American workers down.
https://blog.heritage.org/2014/04/08/equal-pay-day-minimum-wage-two-ways-hurt-women-workplace/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell
Readers say 500,000 to 1 million jobs will be lost due to the Minimum Wage Hike
If you read the article, you’ll see that 500,000 jobs gone is the lower end of the CBO estimate. The upper end is 1million. ( https://theridgewoodblog.net/cbo-says-minimum-wage-bill-would-cost-jobs-boost-income/ )
How can Jason Furman, who claims to be an economist, be anything other than a government shill? The supply and demand theory that is the basis of economics says that when you raise the price of something by 40%, demand for it will surely fall. Surely, he knows better.
The ones who will be hurt the most by this are minority youth trying to enter the workforce. Look for inner city youth unemployment to rise significantly and hundreds of thousands more to land on the dole. Maybe that’s the goal here.
If you can’t pull better than a minimum wage job you’re the one whose going to lose here. Big government cannot dictate what businesses will do. So they force businesses to pay more. What happens? Employees are dismissed and those remaining are required to do more.