From Michael Saltsman, research fellow at the Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit employment research organization.

Your kids will have plenty of time to hone their skills as amateur film critics this summer. They'll be free to check out the latest mainstream and art house offerings. Perhaps their studies will inspire them to become amateur filmmakers, like the teenaged tyros in "Super 8."

The bad news is that they'll only be able to indulge in this hobby because teen unemployment continues to be so high: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that teen unemployment is near 25 percent nationally.

In North Carolina, the teen jobless rate averaged 32.1 percent as of May of this year. And those numbers only include teens actively looking for work. If teens who have given up are included, the rate climbs to 33.4 percent.

Why have we seen such an increase in out-of-work teenagers?

A tough economy certainly hasn't helped. But there's more to the story than tough luck across the board. Government at both the state and federal level has gone out its way to make the job market for teens tighter than ever before by enacting minimum wage increases.

Between the 40 percent hike in the federal minimum wage between 2007 and 2009 and more recent state and city-level increases nationwide, teens get cut out of the loop when the wage floor goes up. William Even (Miami University) and David Macpherson (Trinity University) controlled for the economic downturn and found that the last federal minimum wage increase led to 114,000 fewer employed teens.

This is no surprise. Studies have shown time and again that minimum wage increases hurt those with the least skills the most. David Neumark (University of California-Irvine) and William Wascher (Federal Reserve Board), who literally wrote the book on this issue, found that most studies on the subject point to a drop in employment as a result of minimum wage hikes.

Some people lacking in job skills and experience suffer more than others when the minimum wage goes up. Even and Macpherson, in a separate study for the Employment Policies Institute, found substantial differences in the minimum wage effects across demographic groups: Each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage led to an employment decrease of 6.5 percent for blacks 16-to-24-year olds without a diploma; for whites, the figure was 2.5 percent.

Businesses that rely on minimum wage labor like restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores have low profit margins and high customer sensitivity to prices. Over time, these industries introduce self-service and automation (paying at the pump) to offset higher hourly wages.

Unemployed young adults are losing out on more than money. Studies have shown that teen unemployment has a lasting impact: This is the time when young workers learn the "invisible curriculum" of the workplace, things like learning how to function as part of a team, the importance of showing up on time, and how to increase productivity. Studies show those who undergo extended bouts of joblessness as teens are at risk of earning less and have an increased likelihood for unemployment in the future.

But Hollywood will Who needs a job when you have the movies?