Labour Pledges £10 Minimum Wage For Under-18S

[naomi24]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48234398

Sounds good – but could it rebound? Will it deter business from employing the young in favour of, in effect, getting better value for money from older, more experienced staff?

[hc4361]

Not quite true, jno, there are cheaper bus and train passes available for the under 21s and even under 25s.

[hc4361]

Just a minute, don't young people have to stay in education until they are at least 18 these days?

[Old_Geezer]

All wages need to be sufficient to live on after a normal full time number of hours are worked. Otherwise employers are abusing the employees. If this equates to £10/hr then so be it. If it raises costs then those who believe that they have a viable business opportunity need to work out how to reduce costs elsewhere. Or raise their product standards so it sells at a premium.

If imports are artificially low cost due to underpaying staff then government can impose import duty to level the playing field.

As for refusing to employ younger folk and training them, I suspect the market will discover experienced staff cost more than inexperienced anyway, and that it pays to keep a workforce content and less likely to look elsewhere for employment.

These questions posed here about how it's funded seem strange. Employers fund staff.

[jno]

thanks, hc4361. The cutoff age in London seems to be 18 on TfL transport, though there are exceptions for students and those on work placement

[hc4361]

OG, if prices increase to meet pay rises then it is obvious the wages will need to increase again. Then prices will rise, then wages.....

[Togo]

//Labour Pledges £10 Minimum Wage For Under-18S//

Not good enough. What about a reduction in hours to a maximum of 2 hours a day with a minimum of £400 a week in take home pay? Plus 30 weeks holiday a year and 22 weeks paid sickness pay for those who need it annually? We must also insist that trainers, hoodies, baggy trousers, designer skiddies, mobile phones, game consoles and a choice of mind bending drugs are provided for interviewees regardless of whether they choose to accept the job offer.

[Old_Geezer]

No it doesn't. Things settle down. And as mentioned folk can go find cost savings elsewhere if they have a valid business model.

[gulliver1]

If Labour did get elected and they took over the Magic Money Tree from
The Cons, there would be a note attached, saying sorry we spent it all most of it went to the DUP in return for Propping us up. PMSL.

[gulliver1]

PS I forgot to mention the £ Billions we have spent on Brexit so far, and we are still in the EU . Signed N Hammond.

[Jackdaw33]

Back in 1967 I earned £10 per week and thought myself well-off.

[jno]

with lager about 20p a pint, you were well off.

[Jackdaw33]

Beer then averaged about 10p per pint.

[youngmafbog]

Raising the minimum wage like that is pointless as what it will do is push the wage of the skilled people, supervisors & Managers up to. Then the price of goods rises, unemployment goes up due to outsourcing and the whole inflationary cycle has to start again.

But I doubt anyone in the current labour party has the first clue about basic economics.

[david small]

Remember Clegg and the tuition charge promise? Same fallacy different lie. Audacity is free, paucity of forethought, or malevolent intent?

[webbo3]

over 18s don't matter then.!

[pixie374]

I'm honestly not sure here... I don't see any rational reason for younger people to be paid less on a minimum wage job, but it would probably mean lowering it for everyone slightly, rather than raising it for everyone.

[andres]

Used to be that the young were paid less and that gave them the aspiration to work harder to get to the next pay increment. Giving everyone the same will take the incentive away .

[pixie374]

Who will it take the incentive away from, though, Andres?
This literally is "minimum" and I may well be wrong, but as far as I can think of, even notoriously badly paid jobs still offer pay increases for experience and qualifications, etc.
I am not convinced that a 30 year old (say) with no job experience or qualifications will be more beneficial to a company than a 17 year old starting out.

[jim360]

The link between minimum wage and inflation isn't quite so basic as ymb makes out. It does depend a lot on the level: clearly, setting a minimum wage of £50/hour or some such nonsense would be pretty destructive, but the more modest adjustments under consideration are nowhere near that sort of stupidity. Meanwhile, a quick glance at the inflation rate in the UK over the last 20 years (ie, since the Minimum wage was first introduced) shows that inflation has not been overly affected in the same period. The reason for this is that hiking the minimum wage doesn't actually introduce that much more money into the system.

That last statement (ie no direct causal link between minimum wage and inflation) does depend a little on which inflation index you use; the CPI is generally held to be more robust, and that doesn't track the Minimum Wage at all, instead being more correlated with wage increases generally (and then still lagging behind). The RPI tracking is a little less clear, but it still appears to have tracked overall wage growth more closely than minimum wage growth.

Nor does "taking the incentive away" seem to follow. Introducing a minimum wage doesn't set all salaries to be the same, only the entry-levels. And what incentive can you provide that encourages people to get older, which they were going to do anyway?

ymb's economic analysis therefore seems to be far too simplistic. As I say, I'm happy to accept that this argument can only be carried so far, but as long as the minimum wage is increased sustainably it's simply not true to say that it will be counterproductive. As not that many young people are in work anyway (thus reducing the overall impact), then this should remain the case.

[ummmm]

Depends who you're working for.