44% of min. wage workers in 2010 had attended or graduated college

I guess that means a lot of minimum wage workers are college students. Not surprising if you think about it. They have to get a part time job while going to school. With the bad economy some that get degrees have not been able to find work too.
 
I attend a university and make minimum wage. I think this statistic is only relevant if "attending" and "graduated" are separated. As of right now it shouldn't be surprising to anyone. And another thing about this, the number of people who go to college is higher now than it was, so it really isn't surprising to find that there are more minimum wage workers who go to, or graduated from, college.

Edit: and that is a slightly depressing article. The amount of ignorance is...not surprising, honestly. If they raise minimum wage, costs will go up which will make prices go up which will hurt the low-income people. Not to mention how employers won't hire as many people. The business I work at is proof of this. We used to hire 20 people, but now we only hire 10 or so because minimum wage is so high. And because we have to raise prices then people complain that we are too expensive. Thanks government, for hurting business and not helping low-income people!
 
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oyarde said:
How would you pay rent and repay a student loan on that ??
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By living at home with your parents. Monthly payments are really low (I had about 16,000) in debt and had a minimum payment of about 200 a month.

Anyway, what bugs me about Schiff is that he is rallying against the college model (and yes it is over blown) and yet according to his own website he got a job at Lehman after he got his degree.
 
Only about 5% of workers make minimum wage. So if 44% of those, less than half are making minimum wage attended college, it's not a whole lot of workers. It's about 1 out of 50. Also, I wonder how many of those in the restaurant biz are considered minimum wage workers which we all know waitresses and waiters can make $20-30/hr easily although it's not reported.
 
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thequietkid10 said:
By living at home with your parents. Monthly payments are really low (I had about 16,000) in debt and had a minimum payment of about 200 a month.

Anyway, what bugs me about Schiff is that he is rallying against the college model (and yes it is over blown) and yet according to his own website he got a job at Lehman after he got his degree.
Click to expand...

what if you dont have real parents like me

im a 4.0 btw , very poor, and black
 
oyarde said:
How would you pay rent and repay a student loan on that ??
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By getting roommates, and driving used cars. I've been poor. I've been so poor that I had to ride a bike to get to work because I didn't have the money to fix my car, and I was too proud to ask for food stamps or even a ride to work.

I found that the world was full of people who appreciate that attitude, and a myriad of doors opened up for me.

I have zero tolerance for whining and excuses. If you have two hands, go do something with them.
 
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"In 2010, nearly 44 percent of minimum-wage workers had either attended or graduated from college, up from 25.2 percent in 1979,
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That's a long time span. We have had several booms and busts since then. That statistic must have gone up and down at least a couple of times since 1979. It would be better to see this graphed over time.
 
Chart based on figures for 2010 for those earning the Federal minimum wage showing that only twelve percent of minimum wage earners have earned their degrees (including Associates Degrees):
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/03/visualizing-characteristics-of-minimum_10.html
number-individuals-earning-federal-minimum-wage-or-less-by-education-level-2010.png


Here, we find that minimum wage earners are most likely to have some college education, but no degree, as this group accounts for 31% of all minimum wage earners. These individuals are closely followed by those who have just high school diplomas, but no college education, who represent 29% of all minimum wage earners, and by people having earned less than a high school diploma, who represent 28% of all minimum wage earners.

Combining these percentages, we find that 88% of minimum wage earners are accounted for by people who have not earned a college degree of any kind.
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The majority are also under age 25:
distribution-individuals-earning-federal-minimum-wage-or-less-by-age-group-and-gender-2010.png


More minimum wage statistics:

In 2011, 73.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers.1 Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.2 million had wages below the minimum.2 Together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers. Tables 1 through 10 present data on a wide array of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics for hourly-paid workers earning at or below the Federal minimum wage.
Click to expand...

This translates to about three percent of all workers getting paid the US minimum wage or less. http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm and of that 88% of those lack any college degree. It is true that if you add in those who are or have attended college the number rises to 44% but that may be misleading since it implies that people with college educations are only getting minimum wage. 40% of all people in the US over age 25 have a college degree yet less than 0.36% of the US population both have a college degree and get paid the US minimum wage or less (three percent of US population on minimum wage and 12% of those having a degree).


So when Peter Schiff asks what is the benefit to going to college when you are going to get a minimum wage job he is being very misleading. If you finish your degree, only 0.36% of the time will you find yourself in a minimum wage job- not the 44% he is pushing.
 
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Liberty74 said:
Also, I wonder how many of those in the restaurant biz are considered minimum wage workers which we all know waitresses and waiters can make $20-30/hr easily although it's not reported.
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It's getting less and less that people tip in cash, since debit/credit cards are so common now. In any "chain" restaurant (see Applebee's, etc.), the waiters/waitresses are expected to report a certain percentage of their receipts at the end of the night as tips, which I believe is set up by either the chain, or the IRS (probably the latter).
So, most tips are reported from my experience back in college.
 
CaptainAmerica said:
maybe what you really mean is

dead end jobs =minimum wage

better jobs=nearly impossible to get unless you know the boss of the boss
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Who you know will get you the job, what you know...if it even matters...will let you keep the job.
The WHO YOU KNOW, is very important though...I agree.
 
Attended? As in past tense? So if I started school but was too lazy to apply myself and failed the first semester and dropped out, I'm still counted among the 44%?
 
There are a lot of jobs out there, at least where I am in Alberta Canada, where there is some amount of college work required for the job, yet the entry level is minimum wage and it takes awhile to move up. you have to REALLY like your job to do that. Trust me, I am one of them lol. I love my job but it's childcare so you can only charge the parents so much before they are unable to afford it and our numbers decline and then my hours decline in response. We went through a super slow period in 2009 where people here were really struggling and in response, we had 6 empty spaces which totaled over $3000 a month losses to my center, so I was cut from 5 days a week to 2 or 3. My boss was crying her eyes out. In 20 years she had never had to cut someone's position but times were tough. So many jobs were minimum wage, it was next to impossible or just seriously impractical, even in two parent homes, for one to work only minimum wage and then fork out almost half their pay for daycare fees alone. Who would want to work 22 days a month and only get about $700 or so for it? No thanks! So our numbers were down. But my job requires one of three levels of college attendance and also a lot of professional development. I got half way through the second stage, doing college coursesw while orking full time as a single mother of two, and I ended up dropping the course load because I figured 'what the heck is the point of doing all this work and only getting a buck or two more an hour, if that?'. But I love my job and it was important to me to be with my kids while I am working (all 3 have attended my center). My youngest is now 4 so in Sept 2013 he will be starting school and I will finally move on to a different job. I can make more money working in a gas station or Dairy Queen now than I can at my current job, regardless of needing college education for it. I was working on my one year certificate in child development, aced it and had over a 90% average, had letters inviting me to join the Phi theta kappa honor society - but I turned it all down and tossed in my books because it wasnt worth it.

While those stats in the OP may be skewed, the Importance Of A College Education has been drummed into people's heads for so long, and new govt regulations are added all the time, it ends up being a requirement for many jobs that it never used to. I believe that in BC, you cannot work in a child care center at all unless you have your one year certificate at least. It costs $13,000 or so to do it and that's about half of what you would make in the first year on the job. ooooo fun.
 
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