Reforming the U.S. Youth Minimum Wage
Unemployment among U.S. teenagers now stands at 16 percent. Raising the minimum wage, as many are advocating, will only make the situation worse.
Unemployment among U.S. teenagers now stands at 16 percent. Raising the minimum wage, as many are advocating, will only make the situation worse.
- There is a federal “youth minimum wage,” or YMW, under which workers up to age 20 may earn a wage of $4.25 per hour for the first 90 days on the job; but not all states include similar provisions in their own labor codes, and as a result, the federal YMW is not applicable in most states.
- Only 15 states have adopted the federal YMW; 17 other states and the District of Columbia have some sort of youth exemption with additional restrictions on top of the federal ones; and the remaining 18 states have no YMW in their labor codes, which means that the adult minimum wage in the state applies across the board.
- If all states and the federal government adopted a YMW of $4.25 for individuals aged 16–19, with no 90-day limit, the growth rate of employment for this group could increase by up to 8.9 percentage points, generating up to 456,200 additional jobs in the first year following enactment.
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