Hope and Change Working Out Well for Teens? Nope.
If you are a teenager and wonder why you can’t get hired, blame Democrats. They jacked up the minimum wage to a point where only a fool would hire an unskilled inexperienced laborer, and at the same time, forced many other teens into unemployment because it just got too expensive to afford them.
The original story on this is over at the Wall Street Journal here. Excellent analysis is over at HotAir here which says:
Four years ago, Congress pushed the minimum wage up more than 40% in a three-step process that finished in 2009. How has that worked out for those most likely to find employment at that wage level — inexperienced teenagers? As the Wall Street Journal notes, the percentage of teens employed in this economy has fallen from 42% in 2001 to 24% today, and it’s worse among black and Hispanic teens:
Perhaps you’ve already noticed around the neighborhood, but this is a rotten summer for young Americans to find a job. The Department of Labor reported last week that a smaller share of 16-19 year-olds are working than at anytime since records began to be kept in 1948.
Only 24% of teens, one in four, have jobs, compared to 42% as recently as the summer of 2001. The nearby chart chronicles the teen employment percentage over time, including the notable plunge in the last decade. So instead of learning valuable job skills—getting out of bed before noon, showing up on time, being courteous to customers, operating a cash register or fork lift—millions of kids will spend the summer playing computer games or hanging out. …
But Congress has also contributed by passing one of the most ill-timed minimum wage increases in history. One of the first acts of the gone-but-not-forgotten Nancy Pelosi ascendancy was to raise the minimum wage in stages to $7.25 an hour in 2009 from $5.15 in 2007. Even liberals ought to understand that raising the cost of hiring the young and unskilled while employers are slashing payrolls is loopy economics.
So will kids vote for more of the same hope and change in 2012?
