In this unattributed article by KXMB a mere two weeks later, the number of North Dakotans making minimum wage is now listed as 21,000. This time there’s no citation of where they got that number, they just throw it out there. So which is it…4,000 or 21,000? What’s the source of the new number? And what’s the catastrophic event that caused it? I mean…assuming the new number is even remotely accurate, the ND Labor Department came up with a number less than one fifth as large with a survey last year! Either the number jumped by 525% in less than a year, or one of these numbers is flat wrong.
Sloppy reporting, folks. Get your facts straight, document them properly, and then try to convince me of how bad the minimum wage situation is. The second you start throwing numbers at me with a deviation of 525%, I quit believing a single word you say.
In my post from this past weekend, I point out how few North Dakotans actually make minimum wage according to the statistics the article quoted. One thing I was unable to address is how many people make close to minimum wage, a number for which I haven’t found the statistics. One could argue that the results would be much different. That may be, but those aren’t the numbers that the media is presenting to us.
Another point of my previous post was that KXMB’s Tracie Bettenhausen was playing up the issue by showing how hard it would be to live as an independent adult on minimum wage. Sorry to have to point this out, Tracie, but if you’re an adult making minimum wage, it’s not because of the evil employers or oppressive ND job market.
By the time a person is 18 and independent, there’s no reason why they should not have been at a job long enough to work their way up in pay a bit or gain enough experience to find a better paying job. That’s assuming that they didn’t take advantage of all the programs to help a person get a college degree in this state. It’s called ambition, and it’s why different people attain different levels of success in life. I have friends who are doctors who had the same average grades as I did, the same family income, but they applied themselves where I didn’t. I’m happy where I am, presumably they are too…but it was up to us. You could make the minimum wage $20/hr, and there will still be thousands of people working for $20/hr while everyone else is making $30.
In any case, I’m just curious where KXMB gets its numbers from, which ones are accurate, and if they’re ever going to be given to us in context. Don’t throw 4,000 at us like it’s a huge number when it’s under one percent, and don’t quintuple that number without citing any sources and expect us to just go along with it.