training wage

[flaja]

For some time now the U.S. has had a reduced minimum wage for teenagers. This “training wage” was meant to encourage employers to hire first time, unskilled entrants into the job market.

The libertarians here claim that the minimum wage is detrimental to both employers and would be employees and therefore should be abolished.

So can any libertarian document that unemployment among teenagers has gone down as a result of this reduced training wage?

[Deadshot]

I'm not a Libertarian but let me give you another take on this. No, I agree with you that unemployment has not gone down. What has happened though, and I believe any minimum or training wage, manager would back me up is that many of those jobs are "revolving door" jobs.

I know when I was a kid, back in nineteen dickedy two, I went from minimum wage job to minimum wage job at the drop of a hat. Managers of those places of employment will tell you that usually by the time an employee is trained the clock is almost done on a majority of employees. They see that theirs no career there, unless they're management, and even then those guys work there asses off trying to keep employees on.

So, no unemployment isn't down, but yes, if minimums were higher both employees and mangement would benefit.

[flaja]

I'm not a Libertarian but let me give you another take on this. No, I agree with you that unemployment has not gone down. What has happened though, and I believe any minimum or training wage, manager would back me up is that many of those jobs are "revolving door" jobs.

I know when I was a kid, back in nineteen dickedy two, I went from minimum wage job to minimum wage job at the drop of a hat. Managers of those places of employment will tell you that usually by the time an employee is trained the clock is almost done on a majority of employees. They see that theirs no career there, unless they're management, and even then those guys work there asses off trying to keep employees on.

So, no unemployment isn't down, but yes, if minimums were higher both employees and mangement would benefit.


The only real purpose I see for the minimum wage is that it prevents employers from taking advantage of people when the economy is bad. When the economy is good most employers have to pay more than minimum wage to attract enough entry-level/low-skill employees. Here in my part of Florida we had burger-flippers and retail sales clerks making $6-8 a hour back in the mid-1990s when the federal minimum wage wasn’t any more than $5 or so an hour.

BTW: A few years ago I heard about a study that showed that unemployment in places that had local minimum wages that are higher than the federal wage had lower unemployment than the neighboring regions that had the lower federal wage.

[Deadshot]

Well I'm not really arguing the unemployment angle, mines more about the effects of paying someone a low wage.

Right now in my neck of the woods, in Western Missouri, most fast food places and Wal-Mart, Target, Kohls (i.e. retail stores) starting pay is better then $7/hr. Well above minimum wage. But each of those places has a hard time keeping workers because of the lack of benefits and the inablity for the majority of those places to provide meaningful carreers.

You can work a shit job, if the pay is good. But if the pay is average why not start at Hardees, goto Taco Bell, then to K-Mart, then to Fuddruckers then enter the job market and search for a "real" job...it's what I did. When the pay is low, it's hard to keep people, plain and simple.

Of course, I'm willing to admit, that the reason that the pay is so low is because these people are either young and unskilled or simply unskilled.