Economics, supply and demand In the article we find that teenagers have the oppertunity to be demanding about their salary in the baby sitting field, because the amount of babysitters today are scarce. The babysitting population, teenagers, find themselves busy with school, part time jobs, and extracirricular activity. Teenagers with drivers licenses are even more scarce than those with out, all in all, It's hard to find a babysitter. Times have changed, just twenty years ago there were 33 million children who needed to be watched, and 39 million babysitters(age 10 - 19), recent polls suggest that children that need to be watched raised 18 percent to 39 million while baby sitters dropped 5 percent to 37 million. The rise in children coupled with American families spending more time out then years ago, has allowed the babysitters to set their price with out haggeling. Baby sitters are making well over the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour because they are in demand, and scarce; the babysitters who train in CPR, serve dinner, and drive are the hardest to come by and can demand the highest wages. In this article we see many examples of supply and damand and the powers of supply and demand. Babysitters are in demand, there is an increase in the amount of children who need to be watched yet there are relativly few who choose to babysit from the allready decreased amount of the babysitter work force. This gives the babysitter the advantage of a noncompetitive work force, allowing the baby sitter to set the price with out bargaining. If we were to compare two different production possibility frontiers, we would see a left shift of the curve while demand for baby sitters rises, from 1980 to 1996. In economics we concider this an inflation, the amount of resources(babysitters) decreased while the demand for them rose. This is what we would concider the begining of an econic problem because the resources are scarce.
