Phil Miller has a nice piece on how the teen unemployment rate has risen over the past year and yet few, if any, writers are mentioning a major cause of this increase: the mandated increases in the minimum wage.
Wouldn't it be nice if legislators and voters could be convinced that demand curves are downward-sloping? Even those for unskilled and semi-skilled labour!
Update: Be sure to see this followup study by Ironman at Political Calculations. His conclusion:
Meanwhile, the lack of employment opportunities for the least educated, least skilled and least experienced segment of the U.S. workforce will likely have costs far beyond the benefits gained by those who earn the higher minimum wage. The government might be able to make the minimum wage earning teenage worker disappear, but they didn't do anything to make the teenagers themselves disappear.
It's likely because the employment situation report doesn't break out any data by income or wage level.
But the Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers does - analysis here:
http://tinyurl.com/disappearing-teenage-worker
Posted by: Ironman | August 06, 2008 at 04:30 PM