In what seems to be a strangely unreported story of late, the federal minimum wage goes up from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour on July 24.
This is a pretty good jump and while no one's going to get rich working for the minimum wage it will, at a minimum have a deleterious effect on retail and fast food restaurant jobs.
In 2007 the minimum wage was set to bump up in increments, so that the Congress could squirm out from under the scrutiny of voting for it every time they wanted to raise it. This latest automatic raise then is scheduled to happen without any governmental action.
It is traditionally bad enough when the minimum wage increase forces some entry-level jobs to be eliminated but now, with many people out of work from their normal employment and seeking these low-end jobs as a stopgap measure, their loss can be even more pronounced.
So now in addition to all of the government tinkering, interference and destruction we are presently undergoing--we have another automatic bit built into the system. I'll be curious to see if much of the mainstream media reports on this development because it falls at such a poor time and might make the legislators who so cavalierly past the legislation even in the face of those pointing out there was no way to determine what the state of the economy might be when the raises would go into effect.
It will be surprising if we hear anything at all as the perpetrators were part of a protected class of individuals when it comes to media scrutiny -- the nest feathering government loon.
