Unemployment, Child Care, Minimum Wage and Basic Kitchen Table Economics - All politics is local

As an Ohioan, I don't care what they do in Colorado, Arizona, California, Virgina, or Tennessee. I mind a little about things in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia because they share elements of  Ohio's economy, but they could be foreign countries as far as I'm concerned. Washington is a bubble and they seem to think they know everything.

I'm not going spout statistics I can't give a specific reference, for they can be used in a number of ways to make any argument. I can give you numbers to contemplate. Saying that 85% of library school graduates being employed sounds good until you consider that leaves 15% displaced which is nearly double the national unemployment rate which includes workers of all educational backgrounds.

Having a master's degree is required to be a librarian in an accredited school, but there's no such requirements to get a minimum wage job. Minimum wage has increased by 40% within the last 10 years, but the starting wages of professional fields like teachers and librarians haven't. Even the fields that paid a "good" wage of  $10 an hour stayed roughly the same, because $10 is greater than $7.30.

When minimum wage jumped from $5.15 to $7.30 in Ohio, I was laid off from my job in a hospital library. The hospital's payroll budget hadn't increased, so they had to find ways to staff the hospital accordingly. The professional position I held was eliminated and replaced with a paraprofessional position which on the surface paid 67% of my hourly wages.

Ironically, I didn't utilize my employer's healthcare benefit which saved them from paying me an additional 40% in benefits, thus meaning my lesser qualified replacement could be costing them 5% MORE than I was.

Healthcare costs have risen since then, so the % is far greater now, I imagine.

Anyways, I wasn't given the choice to take a pay cut, so I got unemployment that was 55% of my wages. Seeing that I was spending 23% of my wages on childcare, 1.75% of wages on local city tax,  and 7.6% on FICA/Medicare taxes, my wages on unemployment were in line with what I was making being employed.

Paying for childcare is a major hindrance in making a budget work, but finding adequate childcare is tied to the problem.

How much should you pay for childcare?

Let's just say a daycare charges $35 a day which averages out to be less than $5 an hour. $5 an hour is less than minimum wage. If someone makes minimum wage and is paying for child care, then her take home pay is eaten up mostly by child care costs. 

Mathematically speaking, there's little incentive to work in the normal sense, but yet people need to eat and keep a roof over their heads. Though the essentials of life grow on trees, we pay with money for others to harvest food, build houses, and heat our homes. Money doesn't grow on trees.

Basic Kitchen Table Economics needs to be taught to children at an early enough age for them to appreciate that having a job is for more than paying for new stuff.

Should a kid in high school make the same wages as a guy trying to support his family? Minimum wage laws dictate such occurrences.