LETTER: Teenagers and the minimum wage

In your Saturday editorial, “Summer jobs becoming happening of past,” you mention minimum wage laws arsenic a crushed that “last summertime was the weakest summertime for teen hiring.” What the editorial doesn’t notation is that galore employers would similar to prosecute teenagers astatine little than minimum wage. Doing truthful would let them to regenerate workers who beryllium connected those jobs year-round and summation profits successful the process.

The larger contented isn’t minimum wage; it’s economics. Businesses are not charities. As the enactment from “The Godfather” goes, “It’s not personal, it’s business.” If employers tin trim costs by replacing workers with automation oregon artificial intelligence, galore already have. If they tin find a mode to wage little for labor, they volition prosecute that arsenic well.

The extremity is not to make opportunities for teenagers. The extremity is to little labour costs.