{"id":17184,"date":"2013-05-06T12:38:40","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T19:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17184"},"modified":"2015-05-28T14:16:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T21:16:38","slug":"the-minimum-wage-and-teenagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17184","title":{"rendered":"The minimum wage and teenagers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In another thread<\/a>, JutGory writes:<\/p>\n

What often gets left out of this discussion are the minimum wage workers who don\u2019t need to pay for rent: unskilled teenagers with no work history. As some have suggested, there are people whose labor is not worth the minimum wage and I would contend that teenagers looking for an after-school job and some extra spending money make up a large percentage of that group.<\/p>\n

The food and rent argument does not work for that group.<\/p>\n

But, hiking the minimum wage may price them out of the labor market, as the unemployment rate for teenagers was reported to be close to 25% last summer (and was probably even higher for minorities).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, let’s remember that teenagers are only about 16% of the workers who’d be directly effected by Obama’s proposed minimum wage increase. Natalie Sabadish and Doug Hall<\/a> used Current Population Survey numbers to look at the demographics of workers earning between the current minimum wage and Obama’s proposed $9 an hour minimum.<\/p>\n

It is a common misconception that the minimum wage workforce is comprised mostly of teenagers working part-time to make a little extra spending money. This is decidedly not the case; rather, the vast majority \u2013 84.1 percent \u2013 of those benefitting from the proposed increase to $9.00 are at least 20 years old. This means that less than 16 percent of the workers impacted by the President\u2019s proposal are teenagers. Additionally, about half (47.3 percent) of the 18 million affected workers are full-time employees, working at least 35 hours per week. Another 35.8 percent work between 20 and 34 hours per week, and only 16.9 percent work less than 20 hours a week. It is clear that the bulk of minimum wage workers are mid- or full-time adult employees, not teenagers or part-timers. […]<\/p>\n

Nearly three-fifths (57.4 percent) of those affected by the President\u2019s proposal would be women. The proposed minimum wage hike would also help workers across all races and ethnicities. Just over half (53.1 percent) of those impacted are white, non-Hispanic workers. A quarter (25.2 percent) are Hispanic, 14.8 percent are non-Hispanic African Americans, and 6.9 percent are Asian or another race.<\/p>\n

A minimum wage increase to $9.00 would benefit mostly low- to middle-income families. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More importantly, the overwhelming majority of evidence shows that the minimum wage doesn’t increase teen unemployment<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Hristos Doucouliagos and T. D. Stanley (2009) conducted a meta-study of 64 minimum-wage studies published between 1972 and 2007 measuring the impact of minimum wages on teenage employment in the United States. When they graphed every employment estimate contained in these studies (over 1,000 in total), weighting each estimate by its statistical precision, they found that the most precise estimates were heavily clustered at or near zero employment effects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As you can see, the overwhelming majority of results cluster around zero – that is, there is no measurable effect of the minimum wage on teenage unemployment rates. Those few that did find a noteworthy effect, are also the ones with the least statistical reliability.<\/p>\n

So no, the minimum wage doesn’t increase unemployment among teens (or adults). And in any case, the large majority of workers who would be directly helped by a minimum wage increase are adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In another thread, JutGory writes: What often gets left out of this discussion are the minimum wage workers who don\u2019t need to pay for rent: unskilled teenagers with no work history. As some have suggested, there are people whose labor … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like","category-minimum-wage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17184"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19929,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17184\/revisions\/19929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}