Posted on 05/13/2015 8:27:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Did you know that 89 percent of all minimum wage workers in the United States are not teens? At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women. Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can (often that means two or three jobs), and yet despite all of their hard work they still find themselves mired in poverty. One of the big reasons for this is that we have created two classes of workers in the United States. “Full-time workers” are entitled to an array of benefits and protections by law that “part-time workers” do not get. And thanks to perverse incentives contained in Obamacare and other ridiculous laws, we have motivated employers to move as many workers from the “full-time” category to the “part-time” category as possible. It may be hard to believe, but right now only 44 percent of all U.S. adults are employed for 30 or more hours each week. But to get any kind of a job at all is a real challenge in many parts of the country today. As you read this article, there are more than 100 million working age Americans that are not employed in any capacity. And according to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the federal government was actually using honest numbers the unemployment rate would be sitting at 23 percent. That is not an “employment recovery” – that is a national crisis.
The following infographic comes from the Economic Policy Institute. I certainly do not agree with a lot of the things that the Economic Policy Institute stands for, but I think that these numbers do accurately reflect what “part-time America” looks like today…
So what is the solution to this problem?
Most Democrats believe that raising the minimum wage would fix this. But as Zero Hedge has pointed out, it isn’t quite that simple…
Last week, we noted that Democratic lawmakers in the US are pushing for what they call “$12 by ’20” which, as the name implies, is an effort to raise the minimum wage to $12/hour over the course of the next five years. Republicans argue that if Democrats got their wish and the pay floor were increased by nearly 70%, it would do more harm than good for low-income Americans as the number of jobs that would be lost as a result of employers cutting back in the face of dramatically higher labor costs would offset the benefit that accrues to the workers who are lucky enough to keep their jobs.
Yes, raising the minimum wage would make life better for many minimum wage workers in America. But a large number of them would also lose their jobs completely, and a lot of small businesses would deeply suffer financially.
Ideally, what we would love to see happen is for the U.S. economy to be producing so many good jobs that the only people that are looking for entry-level part-time jobs would be teens, people just starting out in the workforce, etc. Back when I was a teen, I remember walking into a McDonald’s and getting hired on the spot because they were in dire need of workers. Sadly, those days are long, long gone.
Over the past several decades, millions of good paying American jobs have been shipped overseas, and millions more have been lost to advancing technology. And as I wrote about the other day, Barack Obama is deeply betraying American workers by working on a global economic treaty that would destroy millions more good paying jobs.
Thanks to the foolishness of our politicians, there is now intense competition even for minimum wage jobs at this point.
We keep hearing about an “employment recovery”, but it is a giant lie. Posted below is a chart of the civilian employment to population ratio. As you can see, the percentage of the working age population that is actually employed is much, much lower than it used to be…
In recent months, we have seen the employment-population ratio move slightly higher. But can this be called “an employment recovery”? Of course not. We are still way, way below the level that we were at just prior to the last recession, and now the next recession is just about upon us.
Meanwhile, the quality of our jobs continues to decline as more Americans are being pushed into “part-time work” with each passing year.
Since February of 2008, the size of the U.S. population has grown by 16.8 million people. But during that same time frame, the number of full-time jobs in this country has actually decreased.
And at this point, the majority of American workers simply do not make enough money to support a middle class family. The following income numbers come directly from the Social Security Administration…
-39 percent of American workers make less than $20,000 a year.
-52 percent of American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
-63 percent of American workers make less than $40,000 a year.
-72 percent of American workers make less than $50,000 a year.
Are you starting to see why I am so fired up about all of this?
We have developed a business culture in this country which does not care about workers. In business schools all over America, future executives are taught that a corporation only has one goal – to maximize wealth for the shareholders. Taking care of those that are part of your team is treated as an afterthought at best.
As corporations have gotten bigger, they have shown less and less concern for those that work for them. These days, employees are generally regarded as “expensive liabilities” that are to be discarded the moment that their usefulness has come to an end. And news of layoffs is often rewarded by Wall Street by a surge in the stock prices of the companies making those layoffs.
In the old days, more businesses in America were family-owned, and employees were often regarded as almost “part of the family”. Unfortunately, those days have disappeared forever.
Now, employees are treated like scum by many big companies, and if they don’t like how they are being treated they are told that they can leave. For example, just consider what was going on at a security company down in Florida…
Jose Molero worked as a site inspector for the company, which provides security for neighborhoods and companies across the country, for more than a year.
Molero says when he went to the Kensington Golf and Country Club guardhouse, he found wooden paddles on a desk, some with staff names on them and one reading “for staff discipline.”
He says there was also what is called a “Wall of Shame,” where the supervisor points out and posts reports that contain grammatical errors.
When Molero complained about these things to his district manager, he was told that if anyone was offended “maybe they shouldn’t work here”…
Molero contacted his operations manager, who told him to speak with the district manager. He says the district manager sent him an email response that said, “if that hurts their feelings then maybe they shouldn’t work here.”
Do you have a similar horror story to share?
Most of us do.
The U.S. economy is absolutely dominated by cold, heartless corporations that have no interest in listening to the little guy. If they could find a way to do it, many of them would operate with no low-level employees at all. And as technology continues to advance, they will replace as many of us as they can with robots, drones, machines and computers.
I’ll be honest with you – the future for workers in America looks really bleak. The competition for any jobs that can’t be shipped overseas or replaced by technology is going to become even more heated. This means that the middle class is going to get even smaller, the number of Americans dependent on the government is going to continue to explode, and the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is going to become even greater.
Bump for later
If I make one penny more than the “old” minimum wage, is my wage dependent on government?
If I already make one penny more than the “new” minimum wage, how will the increase help me?
These types of women used to work in manufacturing and make a decent wage but now they work at Burger King.
“At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women. “
I believe it. Every McD’s here in L.A. that I visited is choc full of Latinas in their 40’s.
RE: These types of women used to work in manufacturing and make a decent wage but now they work at Burger King.
They should try moving to places like Seattle, where the minimum wage is soon to become $15/hour.
Of course whether or not they can afford the cost of living there is another matter...
No, it only means there will be fewer workers being hired to work for minimum wage.
The stupid, it burns.
If you have a minimum wage job, you have limited skills to offer potential employers. That doesn’t mean you are a bad person, but you are paid what you are worth. It does not take a genius to stock shelves at Walmart. Work hard, try to improve your skills, and hopefully your wages and position at the company will improve. /life lesson 101
1. Are “American workers” all really working?
2. Are they working 40 hours a week or more?
3. What have they invested in the job — money, time, education, training...?
Those who have planned and invested in their future do better than those who smoke pot, drink booze, spend their weekends cruising or kneeling next to a toilet barfing or even better, committing crimes.
Even those who plan make some of these choices during planning. Obama’s kindergarten teachers likely chose their profession because they gets MONTHS rather than weeks of vacation time.
I don’t see how any of this is the government’s business anyway. All they will do by raising minimum wage is raise the cost of goods and services. When everything costs more, $15 won’t buy anything more than the current minimum wage buys. So then the government will call for price controls. On and on. Freedom RIP.
Obama is just repackaging communism by redefining old terms and phrases and by emotion emotion emotion (a leftist’s favorite tactic).
Duh. Minimum wage jobs were never supposed to be careers. Minimum wage jobs benefit those who aren’t able to have a career (people with small children/students/disabled/those who have another full time job and just want to make extra money on the side, etc), or those who don’t want to have a career (not everyone excels in life).
The problem is not the minimum wage jobs. The problem is the economy.
Calculating the average on a "bathtub curve" is disingenuous. Most minimum-wage workers are either young or old; most 36-year-olds are NOT making minimum wage. When the standard deviation from your average is nearly as wide as the data range, there's your clue that computing the average (median, mode) is wrong.
It's like calculating the average depth of the Grand Canyon: if you average out the entire park, you'll get something like "3 feet".
You walk into any retail store and you will see middle-aged men (obviously kicked out of the workforce by the Obama economy)at the cash register. Unheard of when I was a kid and I grew up in the Jimmy Carter economy!
I'm glad the article stated this. We have driven the entry level workers out and replaced them for more qualified workers at the entry level pay. Why? Because that's what liberals and democrats want. They are pushing for a two class society, the haves and have nots. Most libs probably do not even know it. They pander to the poor and TRY and take from the rich. But the rich re-organize to protect themselves. They shrink, they move off shore, they stash investment cash, etc. This is where the middle class gets crunched. The middle class is now forced to either move up or down a class.
Or the level of supply of potential workers with the skill set needed is much higher than for jobs requirement a higher level of skills.
“used to work in manufacturing and make a decent wage but now they work at Burger King. They should try moving to places like Seattle, where the minimum wage is soon to become $15/hour.”
...except that restaurants are fleeing Seattle. Can’t get a $15/hr minwage job at BK if there’s no BK in the $15/hr minwage region.
Nothing else works better for creating jobs at all levels. Nothing else works better for alleviating poverty and raising up the living standards of hard-workers. NOTHING.
Interesting article. Based on the headline, I was all set to expect to see a whiny screech as to why we need to raise the minimum wage. But it’s not about that.
If these numbers are to be believed, and I believe them, then we see what Obama has brought us to:
A nation of unskilled part-timers who struggle to make the middle class that America once had.
It will be this class of unemployable workers who would become the “Chekists” of the New Order when the Marxists take power.
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