When people in the 50’s were told they needed to work hard or go to school, they were often warned that they’d end up “pumping gas for a living” if they didn’t make something of themselves. Along came fast food, and away went the full service gas station, and the threat evolved into “flipping burgers for a living.” In fact, working at fast food has become a metaphor for underachieving. I know there’s a huge flap right now about a certain Super Bowl commercial portraying a fast food worker, but the fact remains: there’s a negative connotation, deserved or not, associated with fast food employment. So be it.
According to this article posted on KXMB’s website, a 2005 Labor Department survey reported four thousand North Dakotans working for minimum wage. This same census reported North Dakota’s population at 636,677. That means that .6% of North Dakotans drawing breath are working for minimum wage. But that’s not an honest statistic, that’s the kind that a newspaper, television station, or other major media outlet would use. But I’m not a journalism major, so let’s get some context:
Using KXMB’s figure of 4,000 people I did some investigating, perusing a report called North Dakota QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau to find out some interesting numbers for North Dakota:
21.4% of our state’s population is under 18 (136,249 people), and
14.7% of our state’s population is over 65 (93,592 people). So
63.9% of our state’s population is between 18 and 65 (406836 people).
Compare that to the .6% of North Dakotans (4000 people) who are making minimum wage! Let’s put it even further into context:
If only kids under 18 worked in ND, only 3% of them would make minimum wage (4000/136,249)!
If only senior citizens over 65 worked in ND, merely 4.3% of them would make minimum wage (4000/93,592)!
Since most kids under 18 don’t work, and the census data didn’t break down minors enough to extrapolate kids old enough to work, let’s eliminate them from the math for a second. Since many seniors retire at age 65 or earlier, let’s remove them from the equation too. If only the remaining 406,836 adults between 18 and 65 worked in North Dakota, only .98% — oh heck, let’s round it up to 1% — would make minimum wage!
Right now there is an enormous amount of pressure being applied by the class envy folks to bring up the minimum wage, even within our state legislature, when statistically NOBODY is making it! If there’s a vault somewhere with the specific data, I’d love to see it. Somehow I don’t think it’s families of four, as the talking heads pushing this thing want to tell you. As Tracie Bettenhausen indicates how hard it would be to eke out a meager existence, even survive, on minimum wage, she’s also completely ignoring the fact that a mere percentile of the jobs out there are paying it.
I dare say, that with only 4,000 minimum wage jobs existing in North Dakota, a person would be hard pressed to find one unless deliberately seeking it. If a guy with the notorious “family of four” were to apply for such a job, I’m willing to bet any responsible North Dakota employer would urge them to instead seek a job paying more money (or even offer them more)! I’ve had some low paying jobs in the Bismarck-Mandan area during my teens, but even bagging groceries, keeping score at the bowling alley, or maintaining baseball diamonds paid more than minimum wage. With McDonald’s paying over a dollar more than the minimum, I’m not even sure where I’d go to find $5.15 an hour!
As for the KXMB article…I’d expect better reporting, but I worked in television and around journalists for fifteen years. The people writing these articles are typically no more qualified than you the viewer, and in many cases know even less about a particular subject than many of the people they claim to inform. They may be simply repeating a press release or be woefully ignorant or misguided about their subject matter. Then there’s the fact that many of them are driven by an agenda. If you trust a journalist as your sole source of information, you deserve to be misled. In this information age, the facts are out there for your perusal. You need only look to find them and make your own conclusions. You may be mistaken from time to time, but at least you’re thinking for yourself.
I could turn this into a book with observations about the kids driving $30,000 cars to Century High School every day, or the politicians fighting immigration enforcement so illegal aliens can make far BELOW the minimum wage, but I’ll save that for a later date. I think I’ve made my point that the minimum wage debate in North Dakota is nothing more than an example of class envy and political posturing, served to you on a plate of misinformation.