As we close the gap between minimum wage and a firm’s starting wage, we lessen the ability to hire younger untrained talent.
When the minimum wage increases, we put more demands on the outcome and performance of the new emerging workforce. This leaves youth and the entry-level workforce less opportunity to enter, as the job description will have to match the pay scale. Our current workforce will have to do more work with fewer employees to share the workload, especially in the competitive small-business world, as it takes more than guts to hire additional employees.
If an additional person costs more to bring on, it will just be that much longer before a firm will next hire. Therefore yes, the impact will be significant.
Monday, February 3, 2014
A Small-Businessman on the Common Sense Impact of the Minimum Wage
Richard Duncan, president of Rich Duncan Construction in Salem, Ore, tells WSJ:
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You don't pay youth entering the workforce the minimum wage. You pay them $4.25/hour. Just hire teenagers and fire them after 90 days.
ReplyDeleteThe youth minimum wage, authorized by the FLSA, allows employers to pay employees under 20 years of age a lower wage for 90 calendar days after they are first employed. Any wage rate above $4.25 an hour may be paid to eligible workers during this 90-day period.
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs32.htm
I would love to see you fire a sub-min worker at Day 91. I hope you're prepared for your state's DOL hearing, and the probable wrongful termination suit you'll get slapped with. You're so shrewd, you'll likely represent yourself.
DeleteOf course, you've never run or managed a business, so you're clueless to the intricacies of state and federal labor law. You've never worked with your HR person to establish a PIP for your employee, you've never had to hire or fire someone. Nor do you seem to have any qualms with the ethics of what you advocate.
You've just found this one little lick you think is clever, and you keep riffing it like you're the Hendrix of economic thought. But, as with each of the artless tunes you endlessly drone on about (debt is an asset, inflation leads to prosperity, etc.), you show that you're just Jerry One Note.
That leaves ample time for the teenagers to learn the job and work ethics. 90 days, right.
ReplyDeleteThen they get the lesson that no matter how well they do at their job they're fucked.
JW: the living proof that knowing laws is no substitute for the common sense.
Please don't feed the trolls...best way i have learned is to completely ignore them (even if they respond to your comment)..don't even address the points they bring up even if their post is 2% sane.
DeleteIf you ignore they will go away to another forum losing any incentive to post...
Surprised, JW.. Thought you were going to say something along the lines that employers determine the price of labor, and that the supply curve is irrelevant to the equation? I guess that'll be for the next minimum wage article.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning about how raising the minimum wage raises costs all over the place back in 6th grade economics. Its simply amazing how many dont understand (or choose to ignore) that simple fact. Also for what it's worth I went to public school.
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