Editorials

Out of a job

How to hurt teen workers

Almost every week now the papers come out with another reason to oppose raising the minimum wage in Arkansas.

Goodness, what must it be like for those trying to get just such a proposal on the ballot? Oh, no, not the newspaper again! Sorry, y'all, but fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and newspapers gotta report . . . . Saturday's business section said the unemployment rate for Arkansas' teens is almost triple the state's over-all unemployment rate. Not quite triple, but close enough for government work. The folks who keep up with these things say the unemployment rate for 16 to 19-year-olds in this state was 16.8 percent in May.

Sixteen-point-eight percent.

That can't be good news for the folks gathering signatures to get a higher minimum wage on the ballot come November. They want to force employers to pay at least $8.50 an hour, eventually, for low-skilled workers. As if businesses in the market for unskilled workers would just eat the added expense and keep the same number of workers on the payroll.

Common sense would suggest otherwise. Employers would just make do with fewer workers. Not only would common sense suggest such a thing, so would most folks who actually own the businesses and provide the jobs. Just ask 'em.

And what kind of workers are making minimum wage? Many of them are teens, working down at the pizza joint on weekends, sacking groceries after school, or doing landscaping in the summers. Just this past March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with a report about minimum wage workers. It'll not surprise you to learn that most are young. About half of all minimum-wage workers in this country are younger than 25 years old. Only about 2 percent are married. And only about 10 percent work full-time.

In short, the minimum-wage worker looks a lot like the kid across the street who's sweeping up at the burger joint to pay his car insurance for the next school year.

Even the good news isn't all that good for those still gathering signatures to raise the minimum wage. Saturday's business section also reported that the unemployment rate for young people--that aforementioned 16.8 percent--is falling. It's the lowest rate since this time of year in 2012. Which means young people are making gains. Slow gains, painful gains, still-not-there-yet gains, but gains just the same.

Why would anybody want to slam on the brakes just now?

Well, it's doubtful anybody wants to slam on the brakes just now. But that could be just what happens if voters raise the minimum wage to $8.50 an hour--and employers, who know their bottom lines better than anybody passing around a petition, decide they need fewer workers. It's called the law of unintended consequences. In this case, those consequences would hit a lot of kids. Hard. Like not being able to find a job.

Those collecting signatures for this ballot issue have until August 18th to gather enough of them to put this bad idea before the voters in November. Hard as they work getting folks to sign on to this proposal, when they ask for your help, tell them that their work might just . . . throw a lot of young people out of it.

Sixteen-point-eight percent.

Shouldn't we be working on ways to lower the unemployment rate among the young? Something tells us that would be a much better idea.

Editorial on 07/23/2014

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