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Minimum Wage law loopholes


As if having teen unemployment north of 20 percent were not enough -- right, it's twice as high as the unemployment rate in Florida -- there's one little bomb tucked into Friday's federal minimum wage hike: It won't apply to teenagers with summer jobs.

There's a special subminimum wage for anyone younger than 20 during the first 90 consecutive days of employment. It is only $4.25 an hour. After that, the pay must go up to the federal minimum for everyone else, which will be $7.25 as of Friday.

So that means a teenager would have to had started his or her summer job back in April in order for the new minimum wage to apply now. At least of the teenagers I know, very few were working at that time. They didn't start until school let out.

(Oh, and, there's a special summer job exemption, too, which says places like camps don't have to pay the minimum wage at all.)

But the good news: "I have never seen anybody pay the teenager training rate," said Maria Perez, president of the Broward County Association of Payroll Professionals.

The reason: No one would apply for those jobs. Other employers are paying more than the minimum, she says. And the statistics back her up. Very, very few workers get the minimum wage any more.

The teenager training rate was inserted into the law back in 1996, but attorney David Buchsbaum, a partner in the Fort Lauderdale office of Fisher & Phillips, a labor and employment law firm, says he wouldn't advise employers to use it.

That's because there's another provision in this section of the law that says employers cannot get rid of another worker just to hire that teenager and pay the sub-minimum rate.

"If that teenager at the subminimum wage is taking a spot that used to be held by someone else, I would have some concerns about the displacement issue," he said.

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Comments

I think there are lots of good employers who pay more than the minimum wage to the teenagers. The teenagers also look for such jobs. So it doesnt require any teenager to work prior to summer vacation.

Thanks
Ashwell prince


I think now a days there are lot of employers were ready to pay more than minimum wage to the youngsters. The teens too look for such kind of jobs. So it doesn't require any teenager to work prior to summer vacation.

Thanks
Ashwell prince


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About the author
You've got the job of managing your money. No one in school taught you how. But you and I, we can teach each other, how to handle it, how to save for retirement, how to make money last, how to educate the kids, how to make a budget work. The conversations I have with my readers are fun. Money's important, but discussing it does not have to be boring.

Harriet Johnson Brackey Harriet Johnson Brackey, the personal finance columnist for the Sun Sentinel, is an award-winning business reporter. Her columns for 2008 were named "The Best in the Business," a national award chosen by her colleagues at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Brackey has worked at Business Week magazine and at USA TODAY, where she was a founder and part of the original staff of the Money section at the country's first national newspaper. After nearly 11 years there - spent covering the 1980s bull market, the insider trading scandals, the 1987 crash - Brackey left Washington, D.C., and came to The Miami Herald. She spent the next decade writing a column about personal finance that chronicled the stock market's Internet boom and bust, as well as the popular Money Makeover features.

Brackey also has done commentaries for Marketplace Money, which airs on National Public Radio and The Nightly Business Report which is broadcast on more than 250 PBS television stations nationwide. She also has been a radio guest on WLRN’s Miami Herald News.
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