Nevada’s minimum wage a problem

The economic downturn has hammered Nevada teenagers’ job prospects. The state’s voters and elected officials have made matters worse.

As the Review-Journal’s Jennifer Robison reported Sunday, Nevada’s nation-leading 12.1 percent unemployment includes a 34.5 percent jobless rate for 16- to 19-year-olds. That figure is the country’s second highest, tied with Washington state behind Georgia’s 36.8 percent.

Teen unemployment has always been higher than overall joblessness, but the current hiring climate is especially brutal for young men and women seeking their first work experience. Retail, restaurant and other service-industry jobs that once were tailor-made for teens now go to grown-ups.

But it’s Nevada’s elevated minimum wage that has effectively priced unproven teens out of the job market. In 2006, state voters approved a constitutional amendment mandating that Nevada’s minimum wage be $1 per hour higher than the federal standard for workers who do not have employer-sponsored health insurance.

As a result, Nevada’s minimum wage has exploded 60 percent in a little more than four years, from $5.15 to $8.25 per hour, an increase that dwarfs overall wage growth over that time. Those mandated pay raises have given businesses annual incentives to replace workers with technology and pile more duties on higher-salaried employees.

The minimum wage started to climb just before the onset of the Great Recession. Nevada employers hired 35,200 teens in the second quarter of 2006. In the second quarter of 2010, Nevada companies hired just 12,500 teens.

This lack of opportunity hurts many teens for the rest of their working lives. By delaying their first job experiences — where teens prove they can show up on time, take direction from a supervisor and interact with customers — workers potentially retard their future earning potential.

State Sen. Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City, this year proposed repealing the state’s minimum wage standard. The Democrat-controlled Legislature made sure the bill went nowhere.

A different solution lawmakers could take up in 2013: a new “training” wage standard for workers younger than 20 that’s well below the current minimum wage. Arizona, Maine, Missouri, Illinois and Michigan have much lower minimum wages for teens.

This is a good idea. But who’s going to go to Carson City two years from now and lobby for unemployed teens, who have no resources and might be too young to vote?