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Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults? In australia we have a
by zizee 5y ago
Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults?
In australia we have a $12.50/hr minimum for 15 year olds. It climbs in increments until about $25/hr.
This system allows teenagers to get a foot in the door for low-skilled jobs, and allows adults to get paid a livable wage.
The result is that a lot of fast food jobs are performed by teenagers, and they are considered entry level jobs. Adults are then paid more, and take positions where they can add more value that what a teen can provide.
- bradleyjg 5y agoOne concern is that this makes teenage employees relatively more attractive and so increases the adult unemployment rate above what it would be with a uniform minimum wage.
- sharkjacobs 5y agoIs this a big issue in Australia?
- catmanjan 5y agoSort of, it's well known that you're unlikely to get a job at McDonald's as an adult
- AnotherGoodName 5y agoIt's not. It really only affects those working part time jobs from 15 to the age of 18. Full time work is not allowed in most Australian states until the age of 17. There's far fewer 15-18 year olds than there are 18-65 year olds. There's also fewer again that can work during school hours. The idea that teenagers are being paid too much or have an advantage in Australians case and that therefore this should prevent changes to minimum wage laws is just a distraction. It keeps getting brought up by people desperate to push a position but who don't want to argue about the far bigger issue of adults trying to survive on minimum wage. Teenagers are an edge case in this discussion and they really shouldn't be the focus.
- broodbucket 5y agoI don't know about big, but when I was at school-leaver age I would pretty regularly hear about friends getting way less shifts at their job once they hit 18.
- RileyJames 5y agoReally? The OP provided an example of country and a policy. You’ve stated an opinion, as a theory with zero evidence. Youth unemployment in Australia is ~double the unemployment rate. 11.8% vs 5.6% https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/youth-unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/youth-unemployment-ra... Employment is more complex than hourly wage.
- secondstring 5y agoEasy on that accusatory tone mate. They didn't claim that as their own opinion, but merely gave an alternative viewpoint: "One concern is that...".
- RileyJames 5y agoYea I’m in a bad mood, and that’s not their fault. Fair enough to call that out.
- angmarsbane 5y agoI had this concern until I realized teenagers have to go to school so there’s a huge chunk of the day that they cannot work. Adults have to take those shifts. This realization also led me to determine that these jobs aren’t purely for teenagers despite hearing all my life burger-flipping was for teens.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 8note 5y agoNot all teenagers are required to go to school. Dropping out is possible, and usually 18/19 y/o don't have high school
- Kluny 5y agoPlus, kids from unstable homes where the parents need them to earn money will sometimes drop out of school to help their family. It's best not to incentivize that.
- leetcrew 5y agovery specific problems have very specific solutions. if this is the main concern, make it illegal to schedule school-aged children for shifts during school hours.
- Jcowell 5y agoAnd then that creates other sorts of specific problems. What of mine conventional schools? Seniors who make their own schedule ? Home school kids ? Are now drop-outs dropped from making an income ?
- Robotbeat 5y ago18/19 year olds shouldn't have a lower minimum wage. They're adults. Younger teens, sure.
- dv_dt 5y agoThe average age of a fast food worker is 29.5. https://www.davemanuel.com/2011/04/21/the-average-age-of-a-fast-food-worker-in-the-united-states-is/ https://www.davemanuel.com/2011/04/21/the-average-age-of-a-f...
- tolbish 5y agoIs that the mean age or the median age? The article doesn't really provide a source.
- kixiQu 5y agohttps://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/fast-food-restaurants-in-america-are-losing-100percent-of-workers-every-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/fast-food-restaurants-in-ame... This 2019 source has it at median.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- enjoyyourlife 5y agoThat incentivizes companies to hire teenagers instead of adults
- DavidButter 5y agoCould that possibly be a bad sounding thing that turns out to be a good thing? I am not familiar with Australian labor issues.
- Jcowell 5y agoFor adults who depend on these kind of jobs to pay the bills, I cannot see this as a good thing in anyway.
- hkarthik 5y agoIt also incentivizes teenagers to work instead of hang around parking lots being goofballs.
- qchris 5y agoI liked hanging around parking lots being a goofball. Not that it wasn't a privilege to be in that position and that teenagers shouldn't be able to support themselves through work if they need or want to, but I'm also glad I didn't want or need to trade it in for a few extra dollars.
- unpolloloco 5y agoIs that a bad thing (in the long run)? More people with work experience = more people who are enjoyable at higher rates later on. Maybe a bit of short-term pain, but everyone's better off in the long run?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- andromeduck 5y agoOnly if adults can't compete with teenagers.
- ramshorns 5y agoPaying poverty wages is wrong, and child labour is wrong. They don't cancel each other out.
- humanrebar 5y agoThere's nothing wrong with a teenager mopping some floors. On the contrary, I learned a lot from the experience.
- frankbreetz 5y agoIs a 15-18 year old working fast food child labor?
- willcipriano 5y agochild "1. a young person especially between infancy and puberty 2. a person not yet of the age of majority..." It depends on the definition of child you are using, I always thought the first to be correct. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/child https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/child
- ramshorns 5y agoNot really. I made the comment overly simplistic, probably 15 or 16 is a fine age to be allowed to start working.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoExploitive child labor is wrong. Allowing teens to willingly enter an employmemt contract is neither exploitive nor child labor.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Allowing teens to willingly enter an employmemt contract is neither exploitive nor child labor. Non-adult teens (“Teen” spans the border) are indeed children, and their labor – while in some circumstances, quantities, etc. – permitted, is regulated as part of the broader regulation of child labor (which is not a total ban, even for very young children, and is graduated by age.) Whether it ought to be within the scope of acceptable child labor or not is a separate discussion, but it is child labor.
- pessimizer 5y agoYou don't want to create a class of people who get paid badly because their jobs are terrible (and also low-skilled.) The only reason you would want a lower minimum wage for young people is because young people are stupid, and you want to put them into a job where they can learn i.e. low-skilled, but ramping up over time, like an apprenticeship. Paying people almost nothing to work a horrible job because you can get away with it is just creating a slave class, and the primary beneficiaries are the companies that employ them. The gap between a juvenile minimum wage and an adult minimum wage should equal the value of the on-the-job training that the juvenile is getting. And there's really no reason to tie that to youth, although demographically it will be dominated by young people; adults might accept a lower minimum wage in exchange for education in the trade.
- tryonenow 5y agoYou're not going to create a slave class by paying teenagers a lower minimum wage for a couple years.
- scrozart 5y agoThis sounds exactly like what OP indicated.
- pessimizer 5y agoA fast food job isn't an apprenticeship. It's just a shitty job. Management of a fast food restaurant takes a bit of generalizable, transferable skill, but there are always going to be an order of magnitude more workers than managers. A job where only 10% of the workers can move up is a dead end job for 90% of them. Every apprentice carpenter can become a carpenter.
- Guest42 5y agoAgreed, I think that a number of these jobs provide a fantastic introduction to business process but the resume doesn’t necessarily translate into the opportunities that it could or should depending on a persons aptitude. As such, it becomes necessary to reconfigure resumes in a way that avoids jobs that might seem unwanted and highlights skills that appear more sought after regardless of how much they were tied to a job. I like the phrase resume driven development. A better path would be for employers to have internal training programs for gaining skills that can help one to climb the career ladder either internally or externally knowing that if a good person leaves that the reputation will attract suitable replacements.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults? Because its effect would be a transfer of jobs from working class adults to middle class kids.
- read_if_gay_ 5y agoDo you think so? While companies are incentivized to hire kids, the kids don't get any more incentive to do these jobs though (wage stays the same), and neither would the supply of them grow.
- roenxi 5y agoThere is, hypothetically, a market price for these jobs. It is below the minimum wage (otherwise there isn't much point in the minimum wage). It is set by the pairwise negotiations of companies, customers and employees. If there is an avenue for the market to reach equilibrium (eg, by hiring children cheaply) then the market is going to try and take it. It will just create a class of jobs that adults can't get employed in because they cost too much to hire. It isn't a question of what the kids would like, it is a question of what choices consumers and employers will offer them. If wages were set solely by employee's incentives then they'd all be paid much more than current market wages.
- 8note 5y agoDo the kids become more incentivized to work if their parents income decreases? I would say yes
- Igelau 5y agoResult: a class of families consisting of unemployable parents supported by the state and their own working children :(
- emodendroket 5y agoI would say maybe it’s not a dream society if we’re creating a class of helots to maximize teenage labor force participation.
- bluedino 5y agoIn some states, minimum wage is 1-2 dollars an hour *less* for 16/17 year olds
- whatever1 5y agoThen we should also give minors the right to vote, form unions etc. What you propose is exploitation, since you get to decide their rights and btw you also decided that their labor is worth less, but they have no say in all of these.
- punkra 5y agoCame here to agree with this, there are laws against the federal government setting discriminatory minimums like this. In the eyes of just about any federal judge the original suggestion would get the entire bill shot down. Also people in this thread talking about how they think this is fair based on experience or cause "teens are stupid" thats entirely misguided of you all to think, there are kids who start working in some states LEGALLY at 14.5 years old, example: N.C. so when they are 16 or 17 they can legally be paid the same 'juvenile' minimum wage? No fast food company or grocery store will actively pay them more if they don't have to and that means less raises and how would all these companies even be monitored and audited for the crossover on ones 18th birthday? What about kids who are emancipated for their parents/legal guardians? What about kids who drop out of school and work? Do they all deserve to make less just because of their age? Geez, the actual obliviousness of people on this site is astonishing sometimes.
- asperous 5y agoMy issues with this are it's ageist and unequal, teenagers are people too. Many teenagers work harder and are smarter then many adults. It glosses over the fact that some teenagers sadly have to support children and adult parents as well. Symbolically it tells teenagers they aren't worth as much as adults. It could reduce age diversity in some jobs which can be important. I never understood the argument that middle class teenagers either should be given opportunities, or the opposite that they should leave those opportunities to adults. Society shouldn't be picking and choosing who gets what opportunities based on things as broad as age.
- Robotbeat 5y agoKids are often not allowed to work full time and ARE required to go to school until 18. You can consider anti-child-labor laws to be ageist, and maybe you'll be technically correct but that's irrelevant. Age discrimination actually is good in this case. Kids should be in school and shouldn't be forced to have to work.
- fukmbas 5y agoWhy do the dumbest ideas come from HN?
- monkeycantype 5y agoIn Au, current ceo at my work recently complained how frustrating it is having 16 y.o. s manage stores. Hmm wonder how that problem happened?
- barry-cotter 5y agoIn a hot labour market you take much worse employees because you can’t get anybody better at the price you’re willing to pay.
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- Animats 5y agoThe US has that.[1] $4.25/hr for the first 90 days of employment for people 20 and under. McDonalds lobbied for it. It's not used much. [1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/32-minimum-wage-youth https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/32-minimum-wage...
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago"Why make things more complicated? We've always had one minimum wage; don't change what ain't broke." Nevermind the numerous fallacies, this is a typical thought pattern for Americans. Another bad habbit Americans have: they look only to their authority for answers (whomever that may be. e.g. the president, fox news, the church, etc). Go watch some Trump rallies to see this in action. I'm beginning to believe our education system has left us lacking even basic critical thinking skills and thus we can not have two minimum wages. Edit typo, and: Not all Americans are this way, obviously, but enough are and they're in the right areas to cause problems. (wrt areas, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering )
- bobthechef 5y agoIf you create two wages, then adults might not be able to compete for those jobs even though they likely need them more than the teenagers do. So unless you introduce quotas (there's your slippery slope), I don't see this as a good thing. Even with quotas, you run into budget constraints. There's also the fact that minimum wage cuts jobs. So if the budget allows for X hires at teenage wage and Y<X at adult wage, then it becomes even more difficult for adults to assume those jobs, meaning things like experience will count less in justifying the more expensive hire. Now without the minimum wage, you could at least give the adult a job at a lower wage than what you pay teenagers. It sucks, but if the choice is between no job and some job that pays below a fair wage, it seems the latter is preferable if you don't want to starve.
- ianai 5y agoThere is a different minimum wage for minors for the first 90 days in the US: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/wages https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/wages