By: Annie DiBernardo
Minimum wage Increase
December 18, 2015
I believe that raising minimum wage is not a smart idea. It will not be as effective as many people think it will be. This will hurt the economy and could potentially take away teen’s opportunities to get first jobs and learn important life skills.
This minimum wage increase will hurt the economy in the long run. By making entry level jobs higher paying will increase the risk that workers get stuck in them for longer instead of moving on to something bigger and better. David Neumark is an economics professor at University of California, who studied minimum wage increases. He estimated that raising fast food pay to $15 would result in a 5 percent or 6 percent reduction in employment. If businesses pay entry level workers more it will make them hire fewer of them which also increases the chance they will be replaced with robots or computers. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the raise will reduce employment by about 500,000 workers.
Employers also say that when their costs are randomly increased such as with minimum wage they become more likely to hire experienced workers and less likely to hire young workers. This may take away many teens opportunity to gain important on the job training. If teens are not able to have their first job they will not be taught the valuable life and work skills that cannot be taught in the classroom.
This is overall a bad idea for our economy and for teens. This pay increase will not do anything but make workers more lazy and take away teens opportunity to have a first job.
