

Why Only One in Four Teens is Employed - tortilla
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/why-only-one-in-four-teens-is-employed/

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Zak
Possibly related is that we as a society seem to be treating teenagers more as
old children and less as young adults in recent years. Such treatment may lead
teens to see themselves in the same way and be less likely to _want_ to seek
employment without external pressure to do so and may lead parents to seek to
limit that sort of pressure.

~~~
dkarl
To me it seemed the opposite. Working at a minimum wage job to have a few
bucks to spend on pizza or clothes seemed childish. Working a minimum wage job
has no connection or relevance to adult life unless you're planning on being
poor. It's economically meaningless compared to the money a kid expects to
earn after college, so what matters for a teenager's adult life is to get a
leg up on college admissions by working on academics or extracurriculars.

Now, that attitude may not be accurate. Maybe working at McDonald's or some
other typical teenage employment provides valuable experience or some skills
that will be relevant to their adult life. However, few if any middle-class
parents tell their kids that, because they don't want to encourage them. For
kids to get used to working a minimum wage job -- to get a taste of self-
sufficiency too early -- to believe that life is _possible_ without college --
these are not things that ambitious middle-class parents and teachers want for
their kids. They don't want their kids to see life as a highway with exit
ramps and rest stops at various points along the way. They want their kids to
see life as a railroad to lucrative professional employment, with any
departure from the path resulting in a catastrophic derailment.

~~~
io
I strongly disagree that "working a minimum wage job has no connection or
relevant to adult life." The self-sufficiency I gained when working for
minimum wage at 15 helped put me on the path toward "lucrative professional
employment" years later.

The experience of being paid according to your actual value, particularly when
you're young and virtually worthless, is an important lesson you don't find in
academics or extracurriculars.

~~~
VladRussian
the Dilbert's author described that great reason for getting a minimum wage
job while being a teenager (
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870435350457559...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704353504575596372042140924.html)
)

"One of my earliest childhood jobs involved shoveling manure at my uncle's
dairy farm in upstate New York. Things were going well until my uncle
explained that no matter how well I performed, I would never be promoted to
farmer. Or even cow. I had hit the manure ceiling.

I consider that experience my first economic stimulus package—the unwelcome
realization that my current job was a dead end. While my classmates were
building snowmen with carrot noses (mostly the girls) and carrot genitalia
(mostly the boys), I started to do some serious career planning about how to
get out of the fecal relocation profession and into the warm embrace of a
loving corporation. I studied hard, and I earned money for college by mowing
lawns, shoveling snow, shoveling even more manure, and (my personal favorite)
shoveling frozen manure covered with snow. I saved my meager funds, and with
the help of my parents, who both took extra jobs, plus a few scholarships, I
clawed my way into college."

------
ahi
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is, and always has been, garbage.
Poorly sourced and poorly argued, whenever I accidentally come across it I
always end up in a foul mood. Not that the other papers of record, Washpo and
NYT, are all that great either.

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silverbax88
We need more of this kind of breakdown from our economic and financial media.

~~~
jbooth
This is just some guy with a blog, he's not the media.

The media are Very Serious People, and things like empiricism and statistics
aren't part of Good Journalism. They have a much more impartial system, where
they ask a democrat and a republican, then average the responses.

~~~
silverbax88
Actually, they don't have an impartial system at all; that's the concept, but
not the practice. Journalism isn't just 'we report everything everybody says',
true journalism means digging to find out the actual facts and report those,
and then possibly include the opinions of those who have a vested interest in
interpretation.

And saying 'just some guy with a blog' is not an argument. That's just the old
trick of 'shoot the messenger'. What, exactly, qualifies someone with a
television camera or a printing press as more credible than someone who is
writing for a blog? Why would that make any difference as to the whether the
content is true or not? It doesn't. When studying journalism in college, you
learn that when someone tries to discredit the source of an article rather
than attacking the article on merit, then it's a near-certainty that the
content in the article is true.

~~~
Locke1689
Jbooth was being facetious.

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carsongross
Historic 30 year debt bubble collapses are a bitch, and there isn't much
useful either side, left or right, has to say about them. It's like arguing
whether to turn the wheel left or right after the car has gone off the cliff:
it'd be funny if I wasn't in the car. Decimated productive capacity plus easy
credit and the associated malinvestment and over-consumption equals charlie
foxtrot every time.

Sociologically speaking, what I find curious is that so far the young haven't
really started shooting back in this generational war. It will get interesting
if and when they do.

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walexander
Where are the statistics to suggest that people 55+ are taking all the minimum
wage jobs? Why does this author mention "Bush" four times?

The blogger is editorializing worse than the WSJ here (not that the WSJ
article was much better). Essentially all of the counter points were mentioned
in the WSJ article up front, then they focused on minimum wage worsening the
effect.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with WSJ on this one, but this guy's article is
just as meaningless.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Statistics and correlation are not meaningless. The criticism of the WSJ may
be (probably was) unwarranted, but the rest is not meaningless.

~~~
jbooth
It was entirely warranted, because they're a newspaper and they were reporting
in direct contradiction of the actual facts on this subject, in order to fit a
pre-conceived narrative.

~~~
walexander
Did you actually read the WSJ article, or just the rebuttal to it?

The actual article mentions almost everything he does, then focuses on wage
increases as worsening the effect. This blogger decides to focus on 55+
employment, which he already wrote about. How is one pre-conceived narrative
and the other not?

~~~
jbooth
They provide zero evidence for their contention that wage increases "worsen
the effect", and their phrasing implies that everything would be peachy keen
if not for a minimum wage increase which caused this unemployment.

Meanwhile, if you look at the graph, you see a straight line downward which
flattens in 'ok' economies, and plunges during recession. Was flat through
2007, when the minimum wage increase was enacted. No mention of the fact that
this phenomenon of jobless recoveries has applied to most jobs at most
payscales over the time period they're highlighting. No mention of the fact
that the minimum wage was higher in real terms for most of the 20th century,
and teen employment was higher then (not that the one is likely to cause the
other).

I'll admit that they did include the graph. Reading the article does not make
the author sound more honest or truth-seeking, though. Check out some of the
applause lines.

------
madcaptenor
There have been other minimum wage increases, right? Wouldn't it be possible
to see if those correspond to other drops in teen employment?

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icefox
Given that old people actually vote (after a little more research to
corroborate it) I would put money down that the minimum wage will raise soon.

Or spin another way what company could you create that would have minimum wage
type jobs that you would trust someone older to do, but not a teenage?

edit: spelling

~~~
Joeboy
"Corroborate" not "collaborate", I think.

~~~
icefox
thanks, fixed

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benjohnson
State laws frequently call for higher minimum wages than the federal laws. Our
Washington State law is above $7 per hour.

There's also the paperwork burden: Here in Washington State - it's technically
illegal to pay a non-family memeber $20 to mow the lawn without filling out
pages of L&I forms and withholding a percentage of the $20 and sending a check
to the State.

~~~
georgieporgie
_...it's technically illegal..._

Why is the burden on the buyer of the services? Isn't it the responsibility of
the mower to have incorporated, then pay him/herself and file taxes?

~~~
repiret
Its the responsibility of the employer to follow employment law, and you can
easily end up with the guy you hired to mow your lawn as your employee whether
you like it or not.

At the federal level, there's enough special treatment for household employers
that its not terribly burdensome, but many states make you jump through the
same hoops as a small business (hoops that might be reasonable for a small
business but can be quite burdensome for a household employer)

Also, incorporate? One need not incorporate to do business.

~~~
georgieporgie
I don't believe your assertion that paying for the service of someone to come
around and mow your lawn legally constitutes an employer-employee
relationship.

 _One need not incorporate to do business._

Indeed, I was trying to be brief. Incorporate, register an LLC or DBA, or
simply informally conduct business.

~~~
repiret
See IRS publication 926 (<http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p926.pdf>)

"You have a household employee if you hired someone to do household work and
that worker is your employee. The worker is your employee if you can control
not only what work is done, but how it is done. If the worker is your
employee, it does not matter whether the work is full time or part time or
that you hired the worker through an agency or from a list provided by an
agency or association. It also does not matter whether you pay the worker on
an hourly, daily, or weekly basis, or by the job."

"Household work is work done in or around your home. Some examples of workers
who do household work are: ... Yard workers ... "

"If only the worker can control how the work is done, the worker is not your
employee but is self-employed. A self-employed worker usually provides his or
her own tools and offers services to the general public in an independent
business."

\--------

If you hire Jack from Jack's Gardening Service, and he comes with a trailer
full of equipment and deicdes to use a riding mower the the bulk of your lawn
and a weed eater around the edges, and sometimes sends his employee Jill
instead, then he isn't your employee.

If you hire your neighbors son John when he's home from college for the
summer, offer him to use your push mower and never mind the places too small
for it to get to, and when John is out of town and offers for his dead-beat
friend Jacob to mow your lawn that week and you decline, then John is your
employee.

In my examples, there is certainly a grey area between John and Jack, but my
point stands: the guy who mows your lawn can easily be your employee. Its best
to err on the side of employee, because the law is very unforgiving if the IRS
decides someone is your employee but you have been treating them as a non-
employee.

~~~
georgieporgie
_The worker is your employee if you can control not only what work is done,
but how it is done_

That's the only sentence in there that actually defines what an employee is,
and I fail to see how someone mowing your lawn fits the requirement of
dictating "how work is to be done".

A guy who mows your yard every other week -- most likely along with a host of
other yards in the area -- is most certainly _not_ an employee. Sure, he could
_try_ to make a case if he were injured, but no normal-thinking human is going
to interpret "provides occasional service" as "employee".

 _and when John is out of town and offers for his dead-beat friend Jacob to
mow your lawn that week and you decline, then John is your employee._

Preferring the services of one person or company over another has absolutely
nothing whatsoever to do with the definition of employee.

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Yzupnick
I don't think the WSJ is lying to make it's point.The graph can be interpreted
differently. Up until 2007 employment seems to be following a fairly regular
cycle. In fact right before it seems to be going back up, then there is a
sudden drop. That could be what the WSJ is talking about/

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alexsb92
I am still amazed at the fact that the minimum wage was so low. In Ontario,
the general minimum wage is $10.25 increased in March 2010 from what used to
be $9.50 .

The student minimum wage (which applies to students under the age of 18 who
work 28 hours a week or less when school is in session or work during a school
break or summer holiday) is $9.60 increased from what used to be $8.90.

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rgarcia
Where is the comparison to the employment ratio of the _entire_ workforce?
Without this it is difficult to look at subsets (like 16-19 yrs old, 55+) and
draw much of a conclusion. I would guess that population/macro effects
probably tell a lot of the story.

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dublinclontarf
Correlation causation?

~~~
Locke1689
I'm not sure he proposed a causation, but he did show a negative correlation
with an increase in minimum wage (which suggests _not_ causation).

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neuroelectronic
I think it's generally accepted at this point that the WSJ has become the
conservative mouthpiece of Murdoch since it's acqusition in 2007.

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rajpaul
Has anyone put forward a better theory as to "Why Only One in Four Teens is
Employed"?

~~~
Confusion
I was wondering the same. The question isn't actually answered by either the
WSJ article or this blog post. Are high school diplomas and college enrollment
up? Or is the same thing happening that is also happening in Spain: massive
youth unemployment due to, plain and simply, a lack of jobs?

