Posted on 06/10/2014 8:41:34 AM PDT by george76
In February the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or actively looking for work (32.9%) since the bureau started tracking the data in 1948...
Over the past two years, the BLS has recorded some of the worst labor participation rates for 20- to 24-year-olds since 1973...
Looking at the seasonally unadjusted data—which is what the BLS makes publicly available—for 25- to 29-year-olds, the April 2014 labor-participation rate was the lowest the BLS has recorded since it started tracking the data in 1982
...
Nonetheless, various states and municipalities have increased their minimum wage, thereby increasing the cost of employing inexperienced workers. Minimum-wage jobs have always been a gateway to better opportunities. ..
The bottom line on labor: Make something less expensive and businesses will use more of it. Make something more expensive and businesses will use less of it. The Congressional Budget Office has forecast a loss of 500,000 jobs should the president's proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour become law.
...
ObamaCare is also increasing the cost of hiring inexperienced workers. The health-care law requires that businesses with more than 50 full-time employees offer medical insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week. The administration knows that the employer mandate will kill jobs and has twice delayed implementing it. With an election on the horizon, American businesses know that these delays were political and that the mandate's economically damaging impact is in the pipeline, coming their way.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
I was thinking the same thing.
I see the prices and wonder the same thing. How can people eat that crap and pay those prices? For the same or less you can get a nice sit down meal at Applebee's or similar. Heck, I could even buy the food and cook a better, more nutritious meal for 4 for the same as it costs to feed one teenager at McD's.
Are people in THAT much of a hurry? If so, they need to plan their time better. But I guess it's par for the course when you see people reading papers and talking on their cell phones while driving...to McDonald's et al.
It's a real head scratcher.
don’t worry you poor, stressed out ceo’s, the GOPe has cheap, invisible, illegal labor in the pipeline for you to make up for the “expensive” US youth that the gov’t has hamstrung with obamacare. and as a bonus for you, it’ll keep legal wages for hardworking US families low, and it’ll take care of the last part of the working US economy—the ruling political and crony capitalist elites must destroy: the part of the economy that can still give local jobs to US citizens.
isn’t that great news chamber of comerce? since china and india are already welcoming the gov’t sanctioned transfer of US technology and skilled jobs from well-paid, experienced, quality workers here in the US, to cheap, semi-skilled, quantity-over-quality workers overseas, and now with the gov’t subsidy of illegal aliens lowering wages here, the jobs you can’t move overseas can be converted to lower wages!
salad days for you, you crony capitalists; all you have to is keep those contributions coming to the dems and GOPe, so they can crush those “knuckle dragging” tea partiers.
So is Applebees.
I felt the same way until recently. It seems the average waiter/food order person cannot understand English (and not just foreigners is the sad part) and they screw my order 1/3 of the time.
And it makes me wonder why Paul Ryan has been all for all of this nonsense. The only thing I can think of is the SSI ( and or Medicaid and Medicare ) "Trust Funds" ( yes don't laugh ) are so FUBAR'd that they need these cheap workers to pay into it to keep it afloat, and they know it and they are afraid to tell us. And if they told us how Fubar'd it is... Well you know that drill....
All my meat and produce come from the surrounding woods, my garden, or local suppliers.
Pretty soon fast food restaurants will be mostly automated. One person who alternates between re-stocking the machines, and cleaning/restocking the dining area, and one manager and one tech who float between 4-5 restaurants. . . .
I don’t like dealing with Obama voters. But when I do, I get the large fries.
They have been arround since 1902. They are called Automats.
Automat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drink are served by coin-operated and bill-operated vending machines.
Originally, the machines in U.S. automats took only nickels.[1] In the original format, a cashier would sit in a change booth in the center of the restaurant, behind a wide marble counter with five to eight rounded depressions in it. The diner would insert the required number of coins in a machine and then lift a window, which was hinged at the top, to remove the meal, which was generally wrapped in waxed paper. The machines were filled from the kitchen behind. All or most New York automats also had a cafeteria-style steam table where patrons could slide a tray along rails and choose foods, which were ladled out of steaming tureens.
I read the whole article. What nonsense — “if there was no minimum wage, I’d hire more young people!”
I worked at Carl’s Jr. in high school. The entire staff, except the managers, was high school students. And we worked for minimum wage.
So what’s changed? There are no teens working at Carl’s Jr. anymore because there’s a new, better source of labor that wasn’t around when I was in high school: middle-aged Mexican and Central American immigrant mothers.
You don’t have to schedule them around school hours. They will go the extra mile because they’re supporting children. They don’t call in sick to go to a concert.
Carl’s Jr. gets a better return on their labor dollar with middle-aged immigrants than American teens. It’s disingenuous to suggest that little Madison and Dylan would be slinging fries if only there were no minimum wage.
He’s perfectly fine with his labor force; he just wants to pay them less.
LOL!
Last year I visited a McDonalds after having not gone for five years or so. A friend wanted to go there. I got a Big Mac, and was shocked at the lack of quality and the higher price. It was a small fraction of the size it used to be, and much thinner, and tasted bad while being expensive. Which justified my not buying fast food.
Yes most people ARE in hurry. They eat to live not live to eat.
I automated 4 activities that comprised 80% of the service
rep workload in 1986. A big financial impact at PacBell.
There was room to automate more. Much additional automation
was applied to less publicly visible processes.
Self-checkout in many more stores. ‘Tablet Waiters’ in many airport pubs now. Yep.
I agree concerning cash flow in the Social Security and Medicare programs.
I’ve made the exact same argument on other threads.
But I think the political factor trumps everything else.
New immigrant citizens vote 80% for the Democrat Party.
If the situation was reversed, if they voted 80% for Conservatives, the immigration door would slam shut in a microsecond.
I’m talking no human cooks either: everything generally made to order, and delivered to the counter or your car window by purely robotic means. . .
Once upon a time, I believed Obama, like many politicians, was just ignorant when it came to economics. But I’m now of the opinion that you don’t push the stuff he’s pushing out of ignorance.
A few years back I remember Americans coming back from Europe complaining a Big Mac there was like twice the price at $3... Now they are like $4....
Ridiculous.
I can get a Nice gyro sandwich at that price at my local Indian food mart.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.