On the recordMay 23, 1996
earlier today I said that I had supported the increase in the minimum wage in 1991. I did so primarily because the people who earn the minimum wage in my part of the country are, by and large, people who are age 20 and younger. They do that because in the summertime, our tourism industry has a fair demand for young people to come to the New Jersey shore in the summer to take jobs that customarily pay the minimum wage. I thought I was doing the right thing for them, so I voted to increase the minimum wage. I found, however, that in talking to employers, those employers, during those summers in the intervening time, hired less teenagers than they had previously because we increased the cost of that labor. This chart on my left demonstrates, I think, conclusively, just as 12 studies that I pointed to earlier, that increasing the minimum wage hurts teenagers more than it does any other segment of our society.
Said by
Jim Saxton
Source
govinfo.gov