{"id":12611,"date":"2013-03-19T20:01:05","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T00:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=12611"},"modified":"2013-03-21T20:02:11","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T00:02:11","slug":"secretary-of-labor-nominee-perezs-minimum-jobs-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2013\/03\/secretary-of-labor-nominee-perezs-minimum-jobs-agenda","title":{"rendered":"Secretary of Labor nominee Perez&#8217;s minimum-jobs agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/media\/USATODAY\/USATODAY\/2013\/03\/18\/ap-obama-labor-secretary-4_3_r536_c534.jpg?1b79b3da202957124496e3768cfb7b67cdb10c81\" \/>\u201cLike so many Americans, Tom knows what it\u2019s like to climb the ladder of opportunity,\u201d said President\u00a0 Obama Monday in introducing his new Secretary of labor, Thomas Perez.<\/p>\n<p>By the looks of Perez\u2019s Big Labor agenda, he seems determined to cut off the lower rungs of the ladder so few will follow him.<\/p>\n<p>Obama praised Perez for his stint as\u00a0 secretary of Maryland\u2019s Department of Labor from 2006-2009, where \u201che helped implement the country\u2019s first statewide living-wage law, because he understood that a minimum wage should be a wage that you can live on.\u201d In truth, fewer people in Maryland have any wage at all because minimum wage laws increase unemployment \u2013 especially among youth.<\/p>\n<p>Maryland\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/annapolis\/2007\/05\/maryland_first_to_have_living.html\">living wage law<\/a>\u00a0mandates government contractors pay $11.30 an hour -an amount well above the national $7.25 minimum wage. It has hit young workers especially hard. Youth unemployment in the state is over 20 percent, with black youth unemployment over 40 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Minimum wage workers are primarily under age 25 \u2013 looking for a leg up into the job market. The higher the minimum, the fewer young people get crucial entry-level jobs. A study by West Point economist Dr. Joseph Sabia, found that with every 10 percent hike in a state\u2019s minimum wage came a corresponding drop in teenage employment of 3.6 percent. Indeed, after Congress\u2019s 40 percent, phased-in minimum wage hike to $7.25 kicked in 2009, unemployment jumped. Teen unemployment today is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/article\/20130215\/OPINION01\/302150326\">at its highest<\/a>levels since records were first kept in 1948 with only 25 percent of 16-19-year-olds working.<\/p>\n<p>The Obama-Perez minimum wage agenda (they want the national minimum raised further to $9 an hour) is actually a sop to their Big Labor allies who covet higher minimum floors for collective bargaining talks.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the lowest rung on the ladder up to the job market gets further away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cLike so many Americans, Tom knows what it\u2019s like to climb the ladder of opportunity,\u201d said President\u00a0 Obama Monday in introducing his new Secretary of labor, Thomas Perez. By the looks of Perez\u2019s Big Labor agenda, he seems determined to cut off the lower rungs of the ladder so few will follow him. Obama praised [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12612,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12611\/revisions\/12612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}