Abstract
Changes to youth minimum wage legislation in New Zealand together with steady increases in minimum wages since 2001 have contributed to substantial increases in the minimum wages for teenage workers, and significant increases in the number of teen workers earning at or near minimum wages. With these changes as a backdrop, this paper uses data from Statistics New Zealand’s Linked Employer-Employee Database (LEED) to document the pattern of firm-level teenage employment over the period 2000-2007, and analyse the responses of firms to the increasing relative wages of teen workers.