By Douglas V. Gibbs
When I was a young man, California lowered the minimum wage for kids under 18 to encourage the hiring of teenagers for entry-level jobs over adults. The problem was that fast-food was considered entry-level, not a job to raise a family, and these types of jobs were a great opportunity for the youth to gain job experience. My friends complained about the lowering of the minimum wage for teens, complaining about it being less money, not realizing it was for the sake of making sure they could get the job in the first place. I ended up working for a pizza place, and with a second job inserting the specials and ads into the Thursday and Sunday Orange County Register newspapers for a man who owned a bunch of routes for the paper in southwest Riverside County. The inserts job paid about $40 a week, and I made $4 per hour with the pizza job – and I was happy to be employed. Gas, after all, had gotten expensive. It had topped over a dollar a gallon.
Despite planning for college, and receiving offers from a number of schools, when I turned eighteen, I decided to enlist in the United States Navy. I had been talking to Marine Corps recruiters, but changed my mind at the last minute.
When my daughter turned 15 and a half, she got a job at McDonalds. Our son waited until he was 19, and then got into construction for a little while… until all kinds of forces in the world decided it was not right for him at that time.
Today, according to the New York Post, only about a third of American teenagers had summer jobs this year. It was more than 50% only three decades ago. When I was a kid, we juggled jobs, school, and sports… or at least I did.
I’ve heard some of these youngsters say, “I’m not flipping burgers. F- that.” Are they expecting to jump from living with their parents to a high-paying white collar job, or something? Where will they get the development in the working world they need? The experience that they can follow direction? Or is being called special while they were kids, and collecting a bunch of participation trophies, good enough preparation?
Economists blame the problem on the fact that there are fewer low-skill, entry-level jobs available due to adults taking all of the jobs. Hiking up minimum wages and convincing adults that entry-level jobs should provide a “liveable wage” will do that.
Kids that are motivated, if they can’t land a summer job, have opted for summer classes at high school or their community college.
I think a lack of motivation on the part of the teenagers are a factor, as well as the idiot political moves with sky-high minimum wages and other strategies that increase the cost of doing business, have combined to cause this issue. Reduce the minimum wage for teens below that of adults, and teens will return to learning at entry-level jobs, and perhaps that will also bring back service instead of kiosks, AI order-taking, and problem kids on the streets getting into trouble because they are not being kept busy by, you know, things like having a job.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
