For teenagers, finding a part-time job won’t be as easy as it has been in the past.
Over this past year, teen unemployment rates have been going up, and one of the main factors contributing to this is the federal minimum wage being raised last year to $7.25 an hour.
In many work settings, minimum wage jobs that would usually be filled by teenagers are being replaced with fewer, more qualified individuals, according to Cody Hefner, assistant general manager of Brick Street Bar.
“I did a study with David Macpherson over this past summer to look at how the federal minimum wage has affected employment rates, and it reduced employment by 7 percent,” Bill Even, Miami University economics professor, said.
Even and Macpherson, a former Miami University faculty member now at Trinity University in Texas, used data on minimum wage hikes in all 50 states and looked at how it affected teen unemployment.
Ohio was lucky enough not be impacted as much as other states because Ohio’s minimum wage is higher than the federal minimum wage, according to Even.
“The current economic climb has caused a lot of teens, as well as others, to lose their jobs,” Even said. “We aren’t saying that all teenagers are losing jobs because the minimum wage went up, but compare what happens in a state like Ohio where the minimum wage went up a couple years ago to a state like Texas where over the last three years, the minimum wage has gone up by $2.10.”
Hefner said many businesses in Oxford employ part-time or seasonal employees because so many workers are college students.
“For us, college students are generally a major part of the workforce, but if graduates can’t find a job, they’ve been sticking around, which ends up taking spots for incoming students,” Hefner said. “Being in the service industry, we need people regardless. We have to increase prices on drinks and food and that’s one way we can try to keep up to engage the higher minimum wage.”
Miami University senior Erin Patterson worked at DuBois Bookstore over the summer and is currently working at La Mia Cucina.
“It definitely affects me because since I’m in college, I need to have a part-time job,” she said. “I didn’t realize that it was so hard for a lot of teenagers to find jobs, so I’m grateful I was able to have one this summer and school year.”
According to Alan Kyger, Oxford economic development director, the age of the Oxford population could be a factor in the number of part-time workers.
“Nationwide it is a factor, but in our community where most of our population is the ages between 18 and 22 and most of them are looking for part-time work, it’s not as big,” Kyger said.