“It is not a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge that minimum-wage laws reduce employment opportunities for the young and the unskilled of any age,” writes Thomas Sowell in NRO.
Check out the unemployment rates in such countries as Spain, Greece and South Africa where unemployment rates hover around 25 percent. Why? Each of these countries has a very generous minimum wage law. Then look at Switzerland’s unemployment rate, which according to Dr. Sowell, has not hit 4% in many years.
The last year the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate was 1930—also the last year before there was a federal minimum-wage law. “Ruinous” compassion and bad government policy have resulted in an annual unemployment rate for black teenagers that has never been less than 20 percent in the past 50 years and has ranged as high as 50+ percent. Read more here from Dr. Sowell who argues that what inexperienced, unskilled young people need more than money is a job that allows them to gain some experience.
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