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Employment of high school kids has been plummeting. This line of thinking you are exposing here has not kept up with the times and is more of a red herring. Th
by pwthornton 11y ago
Employment of high school kids has been plummeting. This line of thinking you are exposing here has not kept up with the times and is more of a red herring.
The teens most likely to work are not in school, and thus they actually need a living wage.
Youth enrolled in high school had an employment rate of 18 percent. This is down from 36 percent in 1995: http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=youth-employment#sthash.utkH3fj9.dpuf http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=youth-employment#stha...
And, again, the youth working while in school are more likely to come from lower socio-economic strata. They may in fact need that money.
- jeffdavis 11y agoMaybe it's been plummeting because of minimum wage or other laws discouraging labor of HS students. And is that a good thing or something we should try to reverse? Employment has a ramp-up like anything else.
- st3v3r 11y agoWell, what is better, or more desirable? A high school student earning some gas money, or someone else getting that job and supporting themselves?
- mc32 11y agoAn alternative is to have a two tiered system [as some countries have]. One for teenagers, another for adults, to compensate for lack of experience, or proxy for need.
- st3v3r 11y agoI don't trust crappy companies not to abuse the hell out of that system.
- jeffdavis 11y agoA healthy career is a journey that often begins long before you depend on the money. A first job is more than just "gas money".
- st3v3r 11y agoNot a response to my question at all.
- jeffdavis 11y agoYour question was heavily loaded, and misses the time dimension. Today's unemployed HS student might be tomorrow's un(der)-employed head of household. So don't dismiss it as "gas money". Trying to create a total order by comparing the two alternatives goes down a bad road. There's always someone in need, but if you try to optimize the entire economy around that one story, you will have a disaster. Maybe it's best to just have more jobs, period, even with low pay? And then make up for needy cases some other way?
- st3v3r 11y ago"Maybe it's best to just have more jobs, period, even with low pay? And then make up for needy cases some other way?" Why should that be anyone's responsibility but the company? Why should my tax dollars be used to subsidize some greedy business guy who can't be arsed to pay their employees enough to live on?
- ethanbond 11y agoYeah, not sure why these people seem to think that schools provide shelter, food, electricity and gas to students.