College graduation used to be filled with hope and excitement. Lately, though, it seems as if the feeling most likely experienced while dressed in cap and gown is that of dread, with visions of a future burdened by unemployment, underemployment, and student loan payments in grads’ heads.
Last week, news outlets went crazy after a small Bay Area paper reported that servers in San Francisco were demanding a mandatory 25% gratuity on every check. Far from being an organized movement, the sources turned out to be a few servers talking about how that kind of guaranteed tip would sure be nice. (Perhaps [...]
Workers with low-paying jobs in Colorado, Montana, Ohio, or Washington, just got a bit of good news: These four states announced minimum-wage increases that go into effect at the beginning of next year.
Not long ago, about half of teenagers could expect to earn money and learn some valuable lessons about the real world through a summer job. This summer, however, three out of every four teens will be out of work. If the minimum wage drops back to the mid-2000s level of $5.15 only for kids ages [...]
For most of 2009, the number of part-time jobs increased—part-timers being cheaper alternatives to full-time workers, whose jobs had been axed in recession-time cost-cutting moves. But since July, there’s been a drop-off in part-time gigs as well. July happens to be when the federal minimum wage was raised from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour.
The minimum wage just went up, from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour. Many observers say that the timing of the wage hike—in the thick of the longest recession on record—is unfortunate if not counterproductive. But now a coalition of religious and community leaders is pushing for another minimum wage boost—to $10 an hour by 2010.
On July 24, the minimum wage will increase from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour. The timing is less than ideal. The national jobless rate is nearly 10 percent, and among American teenagers—who are likely to work many of those minimum-wage jobs seeing a pay increase—the unemployment rate is nearly 25 percent. A mandatory wage increase should help people who are currently making minimum wage, so long as they get to keep their jobs, of course.
