For the past three months, minimum wage workers all across the United States have been striking for higher wages.

Employees at fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s have held informal, organized strikes and walked off their jobs to protest the $7.25 hourly national minimum wage they  earn.

Many workers have participated in a strike that would increase the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“You’re trying to go up and you’re just going down,” protester Shantel Walker told NBC News. “All of us are in the same financial crunch. We’re trying to take care of our families and livelihood.”

Economics teacher Doug DeVries doesn’t believe it makes sense to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“A $9-$10 wage would be more reasonable,” DeVries said.  “Our economy is not stable enough to support such a big hike in wage increase.”

As workers’ wages increase, more and more people will want to be employed. But businesses will also start to lay off more of their workers who aren’t working up to par. As a result the supply of workers goes up, the demand in workers will go down.

This problem does not only apply to adults. Cal High students such as senior Stephen Waltrip, an employee at East Bay Regional Parks, are affected by the minimum wage because of the jobs most work.

“Our minimum wage should be around $9-$10,” said Waltrip. “It would make workers take their job more seriously and be more productive. You get paid for what you do.”

Waltrip believes that a variety of businesses would be affected differently by the increase in wages.

“Corporations would be fine with an increase in wage, but it’s the small businesses that would hurt the most,” Waltrip said. “Mom and Pop shops would not be able to handle that.”

Junior Long Dinh, a former bookkeeper, disagrees with the current wage.

“A $15 an hour minimum wage is livable,” said Dinh. “You don’t see anyone living successfully off $7.25. People with families need more than that to live a good life. If you can prove you need the money, you should have the right to earn a livable wage.”

Sophomore Iftee Shahriar, who works at a photography company, had a different opinion about the topic.

“I think $15 as a minimum is too high,” said Shahriar. “As a starting job, $10 is acceptable. Raising it would help balance out our spending and possibly help uplift the economy. The more you make, the more you can spend and spread currency around.”

Ironically, even though teenagers support the wage increase, the majority of minimum wage protesters are not teenagers looking for an extra dollar, but adults struggling to support their families.

The teenage job industry is slowly decreasing as more and more adults are taking smaller jobs, such as working in the fast food industry. Fast food companies, even with their huge profit margins, usually cannot afford to more than double the current minimum wage.

The minimum wage varies across the country. Although the federal minimum wage is $7.25, San Francisco has a higher minimum wage at $10.55 per hour, according to the Department of Labor.

It’s a nationwide effort to raise the minimum wage. But in some areas it might not even make that great of a difference.

In other states, a higher minimum wage could completely change how people work and live.