The Minimum Wage Lives On, Unemploys More!

OK, time to speak up.

I was going to sit out recent discussion, including Carlos Guerra's piece last Thursday in the San Antonio Express News, about the increase in the federal minimum wage last week for a couple reasons. Based on my graduate studies, it affects so few people, and even fewer breadwinners these days, I thought there were more important topics out there. Plus, whenever I see a "Hiring" sign these days, particularly at fast food restaurants, they’re mostly starting at about $2 above the minimum.

The Heritage Foundation published an article in January of this year based on a study of exactly who and how many earn the minimum wage based on Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey in 2006. It indicated (as I suspected and recalled) that 1.7 million Americans earn the minimum wage or less. That's just 1.3% of all U.S. workers. More than 62% of these, just over 1 million, are part-timers. Of those, almost 650,000 are between the ages of 18 and 24. I'd be willing to bet that most of those fit my characteristic when I was that age: living at home, not the sole-breadwinner and/or in school. That's not to deny that there were others, and I knew some, who were either out on their own and/or supporting children.

Mr. Guerra and the left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities, whom he cites, use a dividing age of "adults of 20 or older". OK. Seems to me 18-24 is a better segment to use as that is when many, if not most, young adults are still finding their way, trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. In the meantime, they are working hourly jobs. At any rate, it's hard to put into comparative context the fact that fewer that 70,000 minimum wage workers are single parents working full-time.

Then there's a whiff of Al "The-time-for-debate-is-over" Gore when Don Baylor, senior policy analyst for the CPPP, says "We need to take (minimum wage increases) off the table as a political issue..." Wow! So I guess people who argue that the minimum wage is a form of social promotion (giving workers a raise via government mandate as opposed to employers rewarding them solely on merit) should just shut up. And I guess people who have studied the topic even more than I have and found that there is a link between the minimum wage and teenage unemployment are just wasting their time. I wish I'd heard from people like Mr. Baylor sooner; I wouldn't have wasted all that time at school.