Black unemployment and minimum wage (Sowell)
May 27th, 2008 | Published in Economics, Politics, Quotes, Race | 2 Comments
As they say, correlation is not causation. But I wonder if there’s something to this.
Unemployment among 16 and 17-year-old black males was no higher than among white males of the same age in 1948. It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment not only skyrocketed itself but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers. In the early twenty-first century, the unemployment rate for black teenagers exceeded 30 percent.
—Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 221.
May 28th, 2008 at 8:51 am (#)
I think you meant to write “…black male teenage unemployment not only…”
I’ve not read Sowell that much. Is he a “free market” guy lamenting liberal intervention in ‘free markets?’
May 28th, 2008 at 8:59 am (#)
Thanks, fixed.
He’s something like your description. He does think there are limits to a free market, but in general he is very supportive of it. It’s a very good book.