In our society, many difficult or important jobs pay surprisingly low wages. Babysitters, social workers, nursing home workers, seasonal lifeguards, and paramedics, for example, all make around $15 per hour or less but provide life-saving services.

This phenomenon can be explained using the supply and demand model we developed in Chapter 3 or by using related material we learned in Chapter 12 if we consider the worker to be a business owner selling their labor services.

We know that if entry barriers to an industry are low, businesses cannot expect to make long-term profits. This implies that jobs requiring little or no training (read: low entry barriers) should not be expected to pay well.

Please complete the following learning portfolio assignment for this chapter:

Determine a job that you believe pays a surprisingly low wage for the task(s) performed.
Discuss the training required for the job.
Discuss and try to justify what you believe the job †should†earn.
What do you think would happen if the government mandated the above-mentioned wage? Please incorporate the lessons from Chapter 4’s material on price floors into your response.