I used to think this way, then I looked at the numbers, and don't see how it can work this way. First, I'm going to limit this to people < 18. Because once yo

I used to think this way, then I looked at the numbers, and don't see how it can work this way. First, I'm going to limit this to people < 18. Because once you're 18 you could legally be thrown out on your ass by your parents, and all of a sudden this "not supposed to be a living wage" has become your living wage. According to the BLS, there are 3 million jobs at or below federal minimum wage (I don't think this stat includes jobs from states with higher minimum wages though). In 2015-16, 3.3 million high schoolers are expected to graduate. So that's (very roughly) 13.2 million people in high school (it's probably a bit higher). Let's ignore that some high schoolers are 18. So if they all worked full time, you would need 23% of your high schoolers to be employed. This ignores hours though, and to realistically attend high school while working and also being able to fill all the required jobs would be at least 46%, and probably be closer to 75%. I don't see this happening anytime soon.