Some Minnesota Lawmakers Think Teens Can Do Adult Jobs
Many businesses are still reeling from the pandemic, many with customers coming back but they don't have the employees to keep them running as efficiently. This has been an issue all over the United States but the state of Minnesota has been hit particularly hard by the labor shortage. Minnesota lost 90,000 jobs during the pandemic and now is in a position of how to fill these jobs.
Many companies are dealing with older workers retiring, and like in past shortages businesses look towards a younger workforce where they can pay them less money to do the same job. But some lawmakers in Iowa are focusing on really young kids. starting at 14 years old.
Minnesota State Senator Rich Draheim has proposed that hiring teenagers is a valuable experience for them and saves the businesses money rather than having to pay a higher salary for older employees (Non-teenagers). But on a positive note, he went on to say how these teens could develop skills at a young age and maybe even choose that job as a career as they get older.
The proposed bill in Minnesota would include 16 and 17-year-olds to do construction jobs. Now as we all know a construction site can be very dangerous and requires a high level of skill and training. It makes me wonder how welcoming some of these construction crews would feel having a teenager on site doing their jobs.
My son took a construction class when he was at Duluth East High School and they built a garage for someone in Duluth. He learned a lot and thought it was pretty cool to learn how to build something but this was a group of High School kids supervised by a couple of teachers.
I understand that each teenager is different as far as work ethic and also maturity and yes some kids choose that job as a career. But these child labor laws are in place for a reason to protect kids and hopefully, that will be considered with these proposed bills.