OohPooPahDoo
Gold Member
There's the first problem right there. People getting by on minwage jobs do not work 80 hours every 2 weeks. They work 80hrs every week. Minimum. I knew a guy, a Thai immigrant, who worked a day job, a night job, and a weekend job. So double that to over $1800/mo. Yeah, you can get by on that.---(They don't they just exist after 3 years they become zombies)----
Article> One of my clients recently reported getting a job at a fast-food restaurant. Since she's been unemployed and desperately looking for work for nearly a year, I was thrilled for her. She was very excited that she'll be making $7.50 an hour - a whole quarter more than minimum wage.
After she left my office, I got out a calculator. I've never worked for minimum wage, so I didn't know exactly how much -- or how little -- money that is.
Assuming 80 hours per pay period, my client will be bringing home around $462 every two weeks. That's with no health insurance or retirement contributions.
If I brought home $924 a month, would I even be able to survive? I decided to find out.
read more How do people survive on minimum wage?- MSN Money
Second, the number of heads of households who work min wage jobs is miniscule. Holders of such jobs are typically married women returning to the workforce, teenagers, people living with others who are earning money.
Finally, very few people stay at min wage. As they develop skills and experience they increase their pay scales dramatically.
Of course if you increase the min wage you do away with jobs like that, and make it harder for people to get on the ladder. This is why black teen unemployment is over 40%.
That isn't entirely true, at least in my personal experience. Every job I've had that I was paid hourly my employer would not allow me to work more than 40 hours a week because they did not want to pay overtime.
This is yet another unintended consequence of government interference. Some people, myself many times, would be willing to work past that 40 hours a week and forgo getting paid that time and a half--but that is too bad. I was limited by government regulation on the possible money that I could get paid per pay period.
Employers will always do what they have to to cut costs, and if that means bringing in additional workers and cut hours to prevent them from going into overtime they will.
If you wanted significant overtime hours in a wage job you should have joined a union. Or you could just whine and blame "big government".