Andrew Puzder: Why Young People Can't Find Work

Andrew Puzder: Why Young People Can't Find Work - WSJ:
The main culprits are policies that make new jobs more expensive.
In President Obama's speeches this year, a steady theme has been creating jobs and economic opportunity for Americans.
...Yet during the more than five years Mr. Obama has been in office, young people have been especially hard-hit by the slow and virtually jobless recovery. Given the destructive effect this has on individual initiative and the prospects of a productive and rewarding working life, the continuing struggle of young Americans to find jobs, start building families and contribute to society is no longer simply a matter of politics or policy. On a deeply human level, it's profoundly sad.
...These disturbing numbers raise a simple question: Where are the entry-level jobs?

Five years of 2% average yearly GDP growth simply doesn't produce enough jobs to absorb the natural increase in the labor force, and over the past eight quarters GDP growth has averaged only 1.7%.
.....The bottom line on labor: Make something less expensive and businesses will use more of it. Make something more expensive and businesses will use less of it. The Congressional Budget Office has forecast a loss of 500,000 jobs should the president's proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour become law.
...ObamaCare is also increasing the cost of hiring inexperienced workers. The health-care law requires that businesses with more than 50 full-time employees offer medical insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week. The administration knows that the employer mandate will kill jobs and has twice delayed implementing it. With an election on the horizon, American businesses know that these delays were political and that the mandate's economically damaging impact is in the pipeline, coming their way.
ObamaCare gives businesses an incentive to either eliminate entry-level jobs or keep the workers' hours to under 30 a week. It also gives businesses a reason to reduce the hours of experienced employees to under 30 a week. These experienced employees are now working second jobs to compensate for their lost hours—resulting in fewer positions for less-experienced workers.
To get on the ladder of opportunity, America's young people need jobs. Creating disincentives to hire them diminishes the notion that "if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead." The reality is that you can't get ahead if you can't find a job.
I'm not speaking primarily as a business CEO. My company will adjust to new laws. I'm speaking as someone from a working-class family. I started work scooping ice cream for the minimum wage at Baskin-Robbins. To put myself through college and law school while supporting my family, I cut lawns, painted houses and busted concrete with a jackhammer. I know how important these jobs are. For one thing, they taught me—as no lectures from my parents ever could—that I needed a good education so I wouldn't have to settle for low-paying work the rest of my life. Too many young people today are being deprived of even that basic lesson.