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One of the main risks of a minimum wage is suppressing the employment rate of less-skilled, less-experienced workers. If the minimum wage is too high, it's unec

One of the main risks of a minimum wage is suppressing the employment rate of less-skilled, less-experienced workers. If the minimum wage is too high, it's uneconomic to take on staff who don't deliver enough value for the business. The reduced rates for young people and apprentices exist to reduce this stifling effect - without them, you'd make it uneconomic for businesses to take a chance on new employees who might need a lot of training or support. This does of course create a secondary risk of businesses laying off older staff in favour of young people and "apprentices", but I haven't seen any clear evidence that this is a widespread problem.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
>without them, you'd make it uneconomic Not uneconomic, but it would impact then in a way that might require reducing profits or flattening wage profiles. That's not contrary to good management it's contrary to greed.
k__ 9y ago
> it's uneconomic to take on staff who don't deliver enough value This was the fear people had. Somehow most people who were paid less that minimum wage delivered enough value. Only a few companies needed to stop their service.
krageon 9y ago
If you've never seen any evidence of that, you've not looked very hard: This is what every supermarket does for their filler jobs, and to a lesser extent for their till and other store facing jobs as well. If you're over 18, you have to be very lucky to keep your job (or more realistically, to keep being given work) in such a situation. Outside of supermarkets this sort of practice is also pretty entrenched in a lot of small-medium IT businesses: They have a sizeable portion of their workforce as trainees or whatever (they may be underpaid legally, so they almost always are) and don't hire them after their time is up (ever, as a rule). New trainees are then cycled into the slots that are now vacant.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

>without them, you'd make it uneconomic Not uneconomic, but it would impact then in a way that might require reducing profits or flattening wage profiles. That's not contrary to good management it's contrary to greed.

k__ 9y ago

> it's uneconomic to take on staff who don't deliver enough value This was the fear people had. Somehow most people who were paid less that minimum wage delivered enough value. Only a few companies needed to stop their service.

krageon 9y ago

If you've never seen any evidence of that, you've not looked very hard: This is what every supermarket does for their filler jobs, and to a lesser extent for their till and other store facing jobs as well. If you're over 18, you have to be very lucky to keep your job (or more realistically, to keep being given work) in such a situation. Outside of supermarkets this sort of practice is also pretty entrenched in a lot of small-medium IT businesses: They have a sizeable portion of their workforce as trainees or whatever (they may be underpaid legally, so they almost always are) and don't hire them after their time is up (ever, as a rule). New trainees are then cycled into the slots that are now vacant.