ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is urging employers in the region to hire city youth for summer jobs. The mayor says area businesses and other organizations have set aside 300 positions for the new Youth Summer Jobs Initiative, but he wants 200 more. He says jobs will keep kids off the street. The eight-week program is meant for youth ages 16 to 21. Slay says employers get no special tax breaks. He says the city developed the voluntary program because the federal government cut back subsidies for employers to hire young people.Sorry Slay, you can’t push for summer employment for youth and the minimum wage increase at the same time. Last year, Slay’s office released this statement:

The best argument for a mandated minimum wage is that it adds our weight in support of our most powerless neighbors. Few people have as little leverage as do workers in low-paying jobs. Comedian Chris Rock observes — correctly — that without a mandated minimum wage there are plenty of employers who would pay less or nothing. Some people, Rock says, would end up working all week for Spam.

The Journal of Labor Economics disagrees with Chris Rock, Slay’s esteemed economist, in their 2000 report:

We estimate the employment effects of federal minimum wage increases using monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) data from 1979 through 1997. We find that the empirical differences in the new minimum wage literature based on CPS data primarily can be traced to alternative methods of controlling for macroeconomic conditions. We argue that the macroeconomic controls commonly included in models where no employment impact is found are inappropriate. We consistently find a significant but modest negative relationship between minimum wage increases and teenage employment using alternative controls or allowing employer responses to the policy to occur with some delay.

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