Re: March 27 guest commentary.
“Contrary to popular belief,” the commentary’s author wrote, “research shows that raising the minimum-wage has little to no effect on businesses that employ low-wage workers.”
That is not what real research shows at all. In fact, it shows a tremendous punishing effect on low-wage workers: fewer jobs. If you remember nothing else about the minimum wage, know this unshakable, time-tested fact: It’s always been and always will be an entry-level wage earned by teenagers, not people raising families.
“Minimum-wage workers tend to be young,” reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less.”
Forbes magazine’s Jeffrey Dorfman took a hard look at the bureau’s numbers and concluded, “Within that tiny group, most of these workers are not poor and are not trying to support a family on only their earnings. In fact … workers who earn less than $9.50 per hour (well over the minimum wage of $7.25) are the second or third earner in their family … . Minimum-wage earners are not a uniformly poor and struggling group; many are teenagers from middle-class families and many more are sharing the burden of providing for their families, not carrying the load all by themselves.”
Most sessions of the Colorado legislature are contaminated with someone introducing the politically self-serving idea of raising the state’s minimum-wage rate. Debate is heating up over House Bill 1300, which would create a crazy quilt of differing county minimum-wage rates.
Vote for it if you must, state legislators, but do with full knowledge that you are doing little to nothing to help the middle class. Instead, your actions could hurt those looking to put their foot on the first rung of the economic ladder of life.
Tony Gagliardi is Colorado director for the National Federation of Independent Business.
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