The idea that all jobs should provide enough compensation to live off of is just not possible. Face it now or later, but a charade which requires financial support will eventually crumble.
Or people working two jobs.
The former seems OK, although there’s clearly a lot of demand for coffee shops workers, and a thin slice of the population (what, like 16-20 year olds or so) can’t serve all of it (and also they should really be prioritizing education at that age, so their overall availability should be very low).
Having a bunch of people work two jobs is just failure of society.
If a teenager has a job, are they paying rent to their parents and paying for meals at the family table?
This is already subsidized - job or no. The average teenager's job supports the things they want beyond that basic level of support that parents are expected to provide.
This really boils down to the set of questions:
1. What value can a company realize with an unskilled worker?
2. What are the financial needs of an unskilled worker without dependents?
3. What are the financial needs of an unskilled worker that needs to support a household?
2 & 3 are likely not the same. And 1 will more closely match 2 than 3... and a lot of the arguments about a living wage are about case 3.
So unless we’re going to a “…to each according to their needs” society, which I think most of us oppose, we have to decide whether we want jobs that don’t pay enough for an average person to live. Calibrating wages for everyone to the needs of teenagers doesn’t seem terribly sustainable.
This is further adjusted to the cost to train an employee in that spot as they'd need to spend that again if they are to replace that employee.
For unskilled works, working in a coffee shop, where training can be done in an afternoon... the teenager has very little bargaining power to move the wage closer to "value they bring".
And that's where the minus wage gets in (I support raising the minimum wage though note that this will have second order effects of making some local coffee shops that are staffed by teenagers unprofitable).
The existing subsidies that are in place regardless of a teenager's employment by virtue of having parents with a place where you can eat and live... and health care (can be on parents' plan until 26) enables the low margin service sector to take advantage of / give employment to people who teenagers and young adults who lack skills to get other jobs (and desire flexibility for school or being a care free young adult).
If you take those subsides away, the service sector won't be able to bargain down / offer jobs at those levels anymore.
The overall unemployment rate is 3.6% which is shockingly low and has been enabling people to get higher wages. The youth unemployment rate, however, is closer to 10% ( https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/youth.pdf and https://www.statista.com/statistics/217429/seasonally-adjust... ) . There are lots of teenagers out there looking for those unskilled jobs - and thus they have less ability to negotiate for better wages.
If you were to calibrate the amount you need to pay to someone at a coffee shop to the living wage needed by the person who brings in the majority of the income for a household... very few service sector companies could afford that.
The less than living wage, unskilled work, bringing in supplemental income for an individual or household is something that is needed in the overall economy.
They should do, or they should be automated so you don't need as many employees.
Your assertion makes no sense to me. I feel like I'm missing something.
A fair wage represents an exchange of equal value. This does not speak to the viability of repeating that exchange as profession; only that reasonable compensation has been given for a reasonable amount of work.