Microeconomics: The Impact Of Minimum Wage On Teens

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Harvard University's Greg Mankiw (2006) concludes “the minimum wage has its greatest impact on the market for teenage labor. The equilibrium wages of teenagers are low because teenagers are among the least skilled and least experienced members of the labor force. In addition, teenagers are often willing to accept a lower wage in exchange for on-the-job training. . . . As a result, the minimum wage is more often binding for teenagers than for other members of the labor force.” What can conclude from this statement, the minimum wages policy implemented by the government has attracted a lot of workers especially teenagers. Teenagers are the period when the desire to have money and spend the way they wanted are on the maximum. Thus, they will grab any job …show more content…
Higher minimum wages ... are especially destructive for people with poor work skills and limited work experience. This is why young people and minorities tend to suffer most." The term ‘ suffer the most ‘ might means young people and minorities will become unemployed and jobless which later makes them unable to fulfill their needs. When the unemployment rate increases, crime rate amongst unemployed also would be increased. In other words, unemployment is the big effect due to implementation of minimum wages and increasing of crime rate is the after effects of unemployment. Jacob and Lefgren (2003) proved that the unemployed youth are more likely to get involved in crime (Raphael and Winter-Ember, 2002 and Gould et al., 2001) which also stated the implementation of minimum wage will increase the crime rate among the unemployed. When unemployed cannot obtain money to support the high cost of living in legal way , they will tend to get money in illegal way such as theft and robbery , fraud and even