69 Percent Of Minimum Wage Earners Work Part-Time: Most Are Under 25 Years Old: 5 Percent Of US Hourly Workers Earn Minimum Wage

From The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, "Obama's Minimum-Wage Omissions" by Jason L Riley:

Nor will you hear the president say that only about five percent of hourly workers in the U.S. earn the minimum wage, that most are 25 or younger and that 69 percent of them work part-time. You won't hear him acknowledge that the typical minimum-wage earner is not the family's sole or most important breadwinner. And you won't hear him admit that the beneficiary of a minimum-wage increase is more likely to be a teenager in the suburbs than a single mom in Anacostia. Moreover, hiking the minimum wage will diminish the job prospects for that single mom, but Mr. Obama won't say that, either.***Labor unions like minimum-wage hikes because they increase the price of labor among non-union workers who compete with their members (who already earn wages far above the minimum) for jobs.***The last thing jobless blacks need is a minimum-wage hike. "The last year in which black unemployment was lower than white unemployment—1930—was also the last year in which there was no federal minimum wage," writes Thomas Sowell in his most recent book, "Intellectuals and Race." [Link added.]

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