The Effects of Imposing a Minimum Wage on Minors
The outcome of setting a minimum wage for minors would be a decline in the number of minors working. This would happen because a price floor acts the same way on labor as it does on any other commodity. If we look at the labor market for minors, the supply curve will be the number or workers in the workforce, and the demand curve would be the number of those workers demanded by employers. Due to the new price at which labor will be employed, suppliers, or workers, will want to work more, due to the increased pay. On the demand side, however, the employers will want to employ a smaller quantity of workers at that new, higher price. This would lead to a large surplus in the market. Because we are talking about a market for labor, that surplus of workers would be expressed as unemployment.However, we were only looking at the market for the labor of under eighteen year olds. Therefore, the unemployment rate will likely not increase that much for the labor market as a whole, but there would be even more severe unemployment than I have already shown for minors. Older workers would fill many of the jobs that were vacated by minors after the minimum wage was passed. Most workers over eighteen have more experience than minors, and so they require higher wages to keep in a job. However, now that the eighteen year olds are more expensive to higher, they cost the same as older, more experienced workers. Thus, older workers would mostly fill the unemployment gap illustrated earlier. However, the more experienced workers would likely also replace some of the other eighteen year olds who would have kept their jobs in the graph above. This would happen for the same reason discussed above, because the more experienced workers are now available for the same price. This would lead to even more minors out of work.With all of these factors taken into account, the overall outcome is clear. The number of eighteen year olds employed would drop significantly with the imposition of a minimum wage. The employment rate of older workers, however, would rise significantly, because they are filling jobs that are no longer cheaper for minors to have.
