Economists: Minimum wage hikes could lead to more crime, youth joblessness

If Bernie Sanders and other champions of the Democratic Party platform truly want to improve the socio-economic status of Americans, they may want to rethink their call for a $15 minimum wage.

This is especially true for young people who supported Sanders in droves and are hit particularly hard.

Economists Mark Perry and Michael Saltsman point to the “less-discussed … longer-term adverse outcomes for young people who can no longer find work at artificially high wages” for The Wall Street Journal. “If delegates to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia this week need a striking example of why a 107 percent increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is a bad idea, they need only travel a few miles north of the city’s convention center on Broad Street.”

In areas of North Philadelphia with 19121, 19122, 19132 and 19133 ZIP codes, unemployment rates for teens averaged 42 percent according to 2014 data. It was 28 percent for ages 20-24. While the national average is for one in three teens to be employed, one in seven teens were employed in those ZIP codes, making for “an astonishingly low” employment rate of 14 percent.

The starting wage in the area is $7.25 an hour, and to more than double it would be “disastrous.”