This is a tough one to find a solution to. The seemingly obvious situation would be to raise the minimum wage.
On the one hand, a lot of fast-food type jobs are filled by high-school kids. They aren’t working to put a roof over their heads or food on their tables, as those things are provided to them by their parents.
Those kind of jobs are often a teenager’s very first introduction to the working world, so it can be a valuable experience for them. If you raise the minimum wage, there would be less of an incentive for those restaurants to hire teenagers, and so more teenagers might not be getting that work experience which can be one factor to lead to higher paying jobs later on.
On the other hand, it isn’t right for a business to expect full-time employees to work without paying them enough to live on. A person should not be expected to spend every waking hour on work, and only sleep four hours per night, just to make enough money to survive. It certainly isn’t right that the rest of us have to pick up the tab to support someone because employers don’t want to pay a livable wage.
I think a minimum wage increase is the best way to go about solving the issue, but I don’t think it will be without near-term consequences; I just think the long-term benefits will outweigh them, especially if we index it to inflation.