The employment effects of minimum wage on fast food and youth

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Recently, the hottest topic of the minimum wage issue became hotter. Much news online and people spend hours on TV shows to explain what will be affected by the increase of minimum wage. A local newspaper wrote that the new bill passed by the Legislature suggests that the Minimum wage in California will be $10 an hour by 2016, making the state become the first of the country to commit to such a high minimum wage. Governor Jerry Brown had signed a bill to bring up the minimum wage in California for those hourly workers in the most crowded and busiest United States’ state from the current amount of $8 per hour to $9 per hour in July 2014 and eventually to $10 by January 2016. In a newspaper interview Brown said, "The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs. This legislation is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy." Many teenagers work during their college life and some of them even starting working since high school time, fast food industries are considering to be one of the most popular places that youth and lots of unskilled workers always choose to work. What will be affecting if the minimum wage rises?
Economic problems are considering being controversial. Many economists stated that whenever the minimum wage is above the market equilibrium, it will cause lots of people to lose their jobs, especially for those youth generations or unskilled people who earn their lives with minimum wages and more than average 10 hours daily working time. However according to other economists, there seems to be no direct evidence to prove that the increase of minimum wage will affect any of the people and in addition of that the increase of the minimum wage even will cause an increase in employment. A...

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...fast food industries workers are always the closest to be affected.
In conclusion, government increases the minimum wage in order to help those people who live in a lower living condition. However, when the minimum wage above the market equilibrium wage, it will affect teenager and students. They will have fewer opportunities to find a job, and may accept even at a lower pay rate in order to support their lives. The fast food industries will not hiring fewer workers but because the fixed cost became higher and they will apparently hire experienced workers instead and some stores choose to increase the meal prices to pass the high cost burden to consumers. It will result in reducing employment and contribute to increased unemployment particularly among young and relatively unskilled workers – precisely those workers that the minimum wage was intended to help.

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