Nevada Ranks 6th In Teen Unemployment

(Victor Joecks/NPRI) – Think Nevada’s overall 12 percent unemployment rate is bad? The unemployment rate for Nevada’s teenagers is a staggering 28.8 percent, which is sixth highest among the states. Washington, D.C., is worse than every state with a 51.7 percent unemployment rate for teens.

As the Employment Policies Institute notes, for teenagers the importance of a job, even a low-paying one, is substantial and long lasting.

Economists have shown that the value of a summer job goes beyond a paycheck. Research published in the Journal of Labor Economics found that high schoolers that worked part-time had a greater likelihood of higher wages and better benefits in future employment, as compared to their classmates that didn’t have a job.

While there are many factors in the teenage unemployment rate, one significant factor is Nevada’s high minimum wage, as anyone familiar with basic economics understands. Even Paul Krugman has admitted that raising the minimum wage increases unemployment.

As Milton Friedman describes in this video, minimum wage laws result from an “unholy alliance” between do-gooders and trade unions and result in higher unemployment for the least-skilled workers in society.

And indeed that’s exactly what happened in Nevada, where the union bosses of the AFL-CIO were the primary backers of Nevada’s minimum-wage Constitutional amendment.
Which means, not only have union bosses harmed the education of your children, union bosses have also decreased your child’s chance of finding a job and their lifetime earning potential.

Thanks union bosses!