Lies about minimum wage

Over at Angry Bear, there's a fascinating quickie study of the correlation between teenage unemployment and hikes in the minimum wage. As we know. our conservative friends tell us that every time there is a hike in the minimum wage, teenage unemployment rises. Turns out that's not entirely true (I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that conservatives were making stuff up again!).

What Spencer found was that the teenage unemployment rate correlates much more strongly with the rate of adult unemployment than it does to hikes in the minimum wage.

So I ran a simple regression of the teenage unemployment rate as a function of two variables. One was the adult (over 35) unemployment rate and the second was the minimum wage. This is based on the premise that the adult unemployment rate captures the bulk of the business cycle impact on the teenage unemployment rate.

What I found was that the adult unemployment rate accounted for about 87.5% of the teenage unemployment rate and the minimum wage accounted for only 12.5%.

Facts can be such pesky things when they disagree with your assumptions. Another in a long run of CONSERVATIVE FAIL.