When I was young and had a minimum-wage job sweeping floors and taking out the garbage at my local Woolworth’s store, I never thought about how I was going live off what I was making part-time.
It was my first job, a starter job.
It now seems the objective of those jobs are to provide a livable wage, instead of extra cash or a stepping-stone internship of work/life experience.
Advocates of a minimum wage increase say that the role of those jobs is different now.
Minimum-wage jobs are often all that is left due to job loss, and many workers have to take on more than one part-time gig in order to make ends meet.
Ian Lee, associate professor at the Sprout School of Business at Carlton University, says that’s not entirely accurate.
He says only about nine per cent of employees in the province work for minimum wage.
Of that nine per cent who earn minimum wage, two-thirds are under the age of 25.
Whatever side of the issue you are on, you must first decide what the objective of a minimum-wage job is — simply a stepping stone, or something that could be a full-time career?