The only thing that happens when you raise the minimum wage is it hurts most businesses. Fortunately we have Democrats to spew their garbage about how their helping the "little people". Apparently, they mean high schoolers.
Source
Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2004
According to Current Population Survey estimates for 2004, some 73.9 million American workers were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.8 percent of all wage and salary workers.1 Of those paid by the hour, 520,000 were reported as earning exactly $5.15, the prevailing Federal minimum wage, and another 1.5 million were reported earning wages below the minimum.2 Together, these 2.0 million workers with wages at or below the minimum made up 2.7 percent of all hourly-paid workers. Tables 1 - 10 present data on a wide array of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics for hourly-paid workers earning at or below the Federal minimum wage. The following are some highlights from the 2004 data.
Minimum wage workers tend to be young. About half of all hourly-paid workers earning $5.15 or less were under age 25, and about one-fourth were age 16-19. Among teenagers, about 9 percent earned $5.15 or less. About 2 percent of workers age 25 and over earned the minimum wage or less. Among those age 65 and over, the proportion was 4 percent. (See table 1 and table 7.)
About 4 percent of women paid hourly rates reported wages at or below the prevailing Federal minimum, compared with about 2 percent of men. (See table 1.)
Nearly 3 percent of white hourly-paid workers earned $5.15 or less, compared with about 2 percent for both blacks and Hispanics or Latinos. The figure for Asians was about 1 percent. Among whites and Hispanics or Latinos, women were about twice as likely as men to earn the Federal minimum wage or less. (See table 1.)
Never-married workers, who tend to be young, were more likely to earn the minimum wage or less than persons who are married. (See table 8.)
Among hourly-paid workers age 16 and over, about 2 percent of those who had a high school diploma but had not gone on to college earned the minimum or less, compared with about 1 percent for those who had obtained a college degree. (See table 6.)
Part-time workers (persons who usually work less than 35 hours per week) were much more likely than their full-time counterparts to be paid $5.15 or less (about 7 percent versus 1 percent). (See table 1 and table 9.)
By occupational group, the proportion of hourly-paid workers whose earnings were reported at or below $5.15 ranged from less than 1 percent for persons employed in management, professional, and related occupations, to about 9 percent for those in service occupations. About three in four workers earning $5.15 or less in 2004 were employed in service occupations, mostly in food service jobs. (See table 4.)
Among industry groups, the proportion of workers with reported hourly wages at or below $5.15 was highest in leisure and hospitality (about 15 percent). About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the Federal minimum wage were employed in this industry, primarily in food services and drinking places. For many of these workers, tips supplement the hourly wages received. (See table 5.)
Among the four broad geographic regions, the West had the lowest proportion of hourly-paid workers with earnings at or below $5.15, at under 2 percent. This compared with about 3 percent for the other regions. In 2004, 24 states and the District of Columbia had a proportion of hourly-paid workers earning at or below the Federal minimum wage that exceeded the national average (2.7 percent); 22 states had a lower proportion. It should be noted that some states have minimum wage laws establishing minimum wage standards that exceed the Federal level of $5.15 per hour. (See table 2 and table 3.)
The proportion of hourly-paid workers earning the prevailing Federal minimum wage or less has trended downward since 1979, when data first began to be collected on a regular basis. (See table 10.)
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