Minimum Wage Issue

“The federal minimum wage was introduced in 1938 during the Great Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was initially set at $0.25 per hour and has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 when it went from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour.” ("Minimum Wage...) The District of Columbia and 29 states agreed on having a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum wage. People earning a higher minimum wage argued that $7.25 an hour was too low for people to depend on; to create jobs and make the economy better, a higher minimum wage would help ("Minimum Wage…) Furthermore, there are facts showing that having a higher minimum wage will decrease labor, increase sales prices, and affect dropout rates.
The increase of the …show more content…
“…Congress raised the minimum wage 10.6% in July, 2009. In the ensuring 6 months, nearly 600,000 teen jobs disappeared, even with nearly 4% growth in the economy, this compared to a loss of 250,000 jobs in the first half of the year as GDP growth declined by 4%.” (Dunkelberg.) When rising the price of any product, people tend to buy less of it, and this applies to labor. Firms make the decision of hiring skilled workers, while the unskilled are highly affected. Teens are affected too, since they are searching for new jobs. In 2009, the rising of the minimum wage impacted them the most, when really they were the ones who wanted to be helped, but the unemployment rate remained high (Dunkelberg.) Furthermore, jobs who pay minimum wage are usually for teenagers, with the help of their parents, or for people who want to make more money, such as a wife or a husband; sometimes these individuals have three jobs, but increasing the minimum wage would hurt these people, because the businesses would lose money. “In a survey of 1,213 businesses and human resources professionals, 38% of employers who currently pay minimum wage …show more content…
Using a −0.1 elasticity and applying it only to teenagers implies that higher minimum wages have reduced employment opportunities by about 18,600 jobs. An elasticity of −0.2 doubles this number to around 37,300. If we instead use the larger 16–24 age group and apply the smaller elasticity to reflect that a smaller share of this group is affected, the crude estimate of missing jobs rises to about 75,600.” ("The Effects of

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