Is a minimum wage job "minimum wage" because the high competition for the job, or because it is easy?

Neither. It is usually because of the low skills level necessary to be hired to do the job. That doesn’t make it easy, it means the required training is minimal.

^^^What he said^^^ The problem is when there is a shortage of people for those jobs industry resorts to hiring foreigners to fill those positions instead of raising the rate.

One of the hardest jobs I had was minimum wage. By the end of the day I was beat to hell. Those jobs just generally don’t require any skill. Usually a day or less of training is all they take and you don’t need any education or much of an I.Q.

It is all about the training required, alough there may be other factors involved. Training new employees is expensive, and often a hidden cost. It is not only about on-the-job skills, but the company’s culture, safety procedures, benefits, uniforms, etc., and they add up quickly.

To hire a new employee that already has the training and skills suited for the job, it often costs less on the front end, but will require more in salary.

Those jobs are not easy, though not necessarily stressful. I would think that being an ER doctor would be a lot more stressful. (I’m not an ER doctor, it’s just my impression.)

It’s minimum wage because it is the least amount you can pay an individual and stay out of jail.

Many jobs are undervalued, although they may not require any formal education they are essential nonetheless e.g. home-based, disability support workers, absolutely essential but vastly underrated and undervalued.

The Fed sets the wage that all states must meet or exceed as they set their state minimum. It isn’t complicated. If you make minimum wage you are in an entry level position so don’t think you are doing your life’s work. Keep looking for better positions. Keep learning new skill sets. Don’t wait on someone to ask you if you would like a new job making more money. You have to find those opportunities.

@MollyMcGuire Congress sets the minimum wage, not the Fed.

@zenvelo I think they meant the Federal Government and not the Federal Reserve System.

I was going to say what @zenvelo said. It’s the job that requires the least skill. That doesn’t mean it’s easy though. Often work that requires less skill is more physically demanding.

It’s easy or very labor intensive without thought being involved.

Of course it does. I used Fed as Federal government.

I had to move to Portland. Into a place with my sisters friend. This was the worst roomate ever. It was a few blocks away from my sisters with her freshly hatched twins.

The dude I lived with had a thyroid problem. And he worked as a chef at a high end restaurant. This meant he got fucking wasted every single night after work. And his body pretty much allowed him to drink until he thought it was acceptable to bang on my bedroom door screaming “YOU FUCKING SKINNEY NIGGER FAGGOD GOD HATS YOU” over and over again for hours.

But to the minimum wage thing. I was desperate to get out. So temp agency and Napa Auto parts.

This was the worst job ever. moving transmissions while avoiding meth fueled forklift drivers.

It took me two hours to get to work on the bus. And 2 hours to get back. Our shifts were 12 hours. So not much sleep in there.

Then I discovered about 50 of the employees had a tent city 10 minutes from the warehouse. So I lived in a tent for a month for a min wage job.

Then I got a job at Kodak dealing with kiddie porn. Ar least that paid enough where I didn’t have to shit in a bucket and dump it in the river.

Most minimum wage jobs are entry level positions. They are the jobs that don’t take a great amount of education or skill. They are the jobs that, if someone doesn’t like the job and leaves or screws up and is fired, can be filled easily. Usually the training for these jobs is basic…can be accomplished in a day or two. They are usually the jobs designed for either young people to start learning the basics of holding a job or for old people who want to supplement income.

You answered your own question. Supply and demand. We don’t like to think of ourselves as commodities (or resources, as they say in HR), but the same rules apply to labor as applies to other goods. If there is a shortage of people willing to do a certain job, the wages tend to go up, and as more people apply for the position, wages go down.

I pointed out a few posts up @LostInParadise when there is a shortage of people to fill these positions,instead of increasing the wage the companies look at hiring foreign workers to fill the shortages so they can keep these positions filled and keep the wage low.
No fake news here I have seen it done.

@SQUEEKY2 , It is still supply and demand, where the foreign workers are part of the supply. Whether the use of foreign workers is fair or reasonable is a separate matter.