Raising a family on three minimum wage jobs

Five days a week, Dejun Jackson wakes at 4:30 to get to the Chicago Chick-fil-A in time to start his shift at 5:45. He works behind the counter until 1 pm, when he walks to his second job as a cashier at Walgreens. He starts there at 1:10 or 1:15, and is on his feet until his shift ends at 9 or 9:30. He heads home, crashes, and wakes up to do it all again.

Jackson, who is 23, has a five year-old son and four-year-old daughter. The kids are asleep when he leaves in the morning and have already gone to bed by the time he gets home. The only real time he gets to spend with them is on weekends.

"Their mom is doing it all," he said. "I work to put food on the table. My money is needed, but so is my time, and all I want to be able to do is give them more time."

Between the two jobs, Jackson is working about 70 hours a week. He makes $8.75 an hour at Chick-fil-A and $10.22 at Walgreens, where he's been working for three years. He's also studying to get his bachelor's degree in criminal justice and psychology so that one day he only has to work one job, one shift.

His children's mom works at Walgreens, too, making $10 an hour. The kids are in daycare all day, which costs them $150 each month, until she gets off work at 6:30. Read more >>

40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage

Are American workers paid enough?  That is a topic that is endlessly debated all across this great land of ours.  Unfortunately, what pretty much everyone can agree on is that American workers are not making as much as they used to after you account for inflation.  Back in 1968, the minimum wage in the United States was $1.60 an hour.

That sounds very small, but after you account for inflation a very different picture emerges.  Using the inflation calculator that the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides, $1.60 in 1968 is equivalent to $10.74 today.

And of course the official government inflation numbers have been heavily manipulated to make inflation look much lower than it actually is, so the number for today should actually be substantially higher than $10.74, but for purposes of this article we will use $10.74.

If you were to work a full-time job at $10.74 an hour for a full year (with two weeks off for vacation), you would make about $21,480 for the year.

That isn't a lot of money, but according to the Social Security Administration, 40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in America today. So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.  That is how far we have fallen. Read more >>

Walmart Threatens To Pull Out Of D.C. Over Minimum Wage

On Tuesday afternoon, Walmart officials, lobbyists, and an upper executive paid a visit to the Washington D.C. Council. What could bring out the muscle of the world's largest retailer? The prospect of a raised minimum wage.

As The Washington Post reports, D.C. Council members are voting Wednesday on a bill that would demand mega-retailers pay their employees at least $12.50 an hour, with Walmart the clear target.

Walmart, which pays its hourly associates an average of $8.84 an hour, according to Glassdoor, threatened to stop at least three of the six planned Walmart stores from opening in the city if the bill succeeded, forcing the council to decide: Are no new Walmart jobs better than poorly paid ones?

In a Post op-ed published Tuesday, Walmart regional general manager Alex Barron called the bill "an eleventh-hour effort" that is "arbitrary and discriminatory" and "discourages investment in Washington."

Update, 07/10/13, 5.50 p.m. EDT: The city council passed the bill by a vote of 8 to 5. It is now headed to the desk of the mayor, who has indicated that he may veto it.

The ultimatum was "immensely discouraging," Mayor Vincent C. Gray told the Post, since six new stores -- three of them already under construction -- that Walmart is planning would employ 1,800 people, bringing needed jobs, cash, affordable retail, and fresh produce to the capital's poorer neighborhoods. Barron said even the three stores underway could be scrapped if the bill becomes law, pending a review of "financial and legal implications." Read more >>

Wages Stink at America's Most Common Jobs

Workers in seven of the 10 largest occupations typically earn less than $30,000 a year, according to new data published Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a far cry from the nation's average annual pay of $45,790.

Food prep workers are the third most-common job in the U.S., but have the lowest pay, at a mere $18,720 a year for 2012. Cashiers and waiters are also popular professions, but the average pay at these jobs tallies up to less than $21,000 annually. There are 4.3 million retail sales workers out there, making them the most common job, but the position pays only $25,310 for the year.

Among the 10 most popular professions, only the nation's 2.6 million registered nurses earn a good living, bringing home nearly $68,000 a year on average. Another two of the most common jobs -- secretaries and customer service representatives -- have an average annual wage of about $33,000. Read more >>

House Republicans Unanimously Vote Down Minimum Wage Increase

House Republicans voted unanimously against raising the federal minimum wage Friday.

A proposal by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour over the next two years and increase the wage for tipped employees to 70 percent of the minimum wage was defeated, with every House Republican voting against the motion. On the Democratic side, six lawmakers voted against the measure, and 184 Democrats voted for it.

Miller's proposal was more than a dollar higher than what President Barack Obama proposed during his State of the Union address in February. Obama said in his speech that Congress and the White House should work to "raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour."

The proposal by Miller was offered as an amendment to the SKILLS Act, which Republicans in the House passed Friday afternoon, over strong Democratic opposition. According to the Washington Post, the act will eliminate or consolidate 35 federal programs and create a Workforce Investment Fund to help those searching for a job acquire the skills needed in the workforce. In his State of the Union, Obama said that he hoped to "cut through the maze of confusing training programs," but the White House said it opposes the House bill, the Post reports. House Democrats argued that the bill eliminates programs for veterans, the disabled, and other groups, and voted overwhelmingly against it. The bill now goes to the Senate. Read more >>

Study: Cannot Pay Rent on Minimum Wage Income

As part of its 2012 report on rent affordability, the National Low Income Housing Coalition released a chart that’s been floating around the Internet. It shows that there isn’t a single state in the country where it’s possible to work 40 hours per week at minimum wage and afford a two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent.

In West Virginia and Arkansas, you’d need to work at least a 63-hour week, and that’s as good as it gets. In California, Maryland, D.C., New Jersey and New York you’d need to work 130 hours or more. Hawaii comes in last place: 175 hours.

I can anticipate a few no-big-deal arguments, starting with the definition of affordability. By “affordable,” the Coalition means paying no more than 30 percent of income for housing costs (rent and utilities). And why a two-bedroom apartment, as opposed to a one-bedroom? Read more >>

95 Percent Of The Jobs Lost During The Recession Were Middle Class Jobs

Who is the biggest loser in the ongoing decline of the U.S. economy?  Is it the wealthy?  No, the stock market has been soaring lately and their incomes are actually going up.  Is it the poor?  Well, the poor are definitely hurting very badly, but when you don't have much to begin with you don't have much to lose. 

Unfortunately, it is the middle class that has lost the most during this economic downturn.  According to Bloomberg, 95 percent of the jobs lost during the recession were middle class jobs.  That is an absolutely astounding figure.  Yes, some executives lost their jobs during the last recession as did some minimum-wage workers.  But overwhelmingly the jobs that were lost were middle income jobs. 

Sadly, the limited number of jobs that have been added since the end of the last recession have mostly been low income jobs.  A higher percentage of Americans are working low income jobs than ever before, and the cost of living continues to rise at a very brisk pace. This is causing an erosion of the middle class unlike anything we have ever seen in American history. More...

1 Out of 4 Employed Americans Make Less Than $10/hour

McDonald's workers on strike, Paris (Photo credit: Tilemahos_E)

Low wage jobs have been a big part of the so-called recovery.  What they also signify is a more troublesome trend that continues to eat away at the middle class in this country.  I’ve noted that the per capita average income for Americans is $25,000 and many seem to be shocked when they hear how low this figure is. 

A recent presentation only reinforces this figure by discussing the number of working Americans in low wage fields.  The problem with having such a large portion of our population in low wage work is that as the cost of living goes up many of these people have a harder time providing for necessities like food, education, and also healthcare. 

Surprising or not, the nation has been seeing a massive divide between the working class and those at the top.  The low wage employment growth signifies a continuation of this trend. More...

Here's what savvy thinkers know about the true unemployment numbers

Via fiatsfire.blogspot.com

-They know that if the official U3 unemployment number that was released with this "release" is up to 9% and the official U6 unemployment is up to 15.9%, then the real unemployment rate which includes those who want a job, those who have fallen off the unemployment payrolls and are no longer counted as unemployed, is more than 23%. 

-They know that the labor force participation rate is at the lowest rate in 25 years.

-They know the number of people not in the labor force AND the number of people that want a job are both a all time records.

-They know that full time jobs are a thing of the past in this country and nearly all new jobs are part time (read: minimum wage Burger King, WalMart et al jobs) which means, don't expect a housing recovery from those people. Take for example McDonalds hiring 62k people of that big number!

The U.S. Middle Class Is Being Wiped Out: Here's the Stats to Prove It

Image by Steve took it via Flickr

From The Business Insider

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay. More...