"The fast-food industry used to employ mostly younger people just trying to make some extra money as they went through school. Now, workers are older and depend on the work to feed families. Analysis by the Economic Policies Institute shows that the average age of minimum-wage workers is now 35, and that 88% are 20 and older."

The pattern is the same in all industries now, not just fast food. There are many other references there for you to peruse too. And it just doesn't mean that young people will simply have to serve longer apprenticeships in low-level jobs. These positions are dead ends, they lead nowhere, they teach you nothing.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-fast-food-protests-hit-los-angeles-thursday-20130829,0,7294893.story

The comforting fable that this is only about kids working part time after school is rapidly vanishing as the entire US employment pattern shifts to the McJob model. Add to this, temps, part-timers and unpaid interns, and grossly overqualified people in menial jobs, in other industries, and what you see is a new pattern emerging, one in which minimum wage and low-paying jobs take over larger and larger proportions of the workforce. These are not kids, they are older workers, former office, even managerial personell, skilled workers, families, single parents and even some former professionals. Nice middle-age, middle-class, white folks just like us.

Do you think I could go back to work now at anywhere near my former position, or salary? Except for a very few highly specialized fields, college graduates are finding it harder to find work at a level commensurate with their training, and high schoolers have little or no advantage at all.

Bowser may be a bit over the top in his analysis, but this is not a trivial problem or a mere recruiting scheme by the unions, or liberal scare tactics. This is sign of a coming two-class America--a tiny managerial/professional elite, and vast hordes of burger flippers and telemarketers--if they are lucky enough to have a degree to help them just get their foot in the door at all.

Meanwhile, the stock market, corporate profits and executive salaries and bonuses just keep on climbing.