EMployers hired and paid on a weekly or daily basis and often shut down for several months of the year due to weather or lack of buisness. When the employers shut down, or a worker was sick, the worker did not get paid. Most of the income figures reported below assume year round employment, but various sources reported that the typical laborer spent at least several months of the year unemployed and without income.
In order to get by, it was often necessary for all family memebrs to work, often even young children. In slum districts some people even housed horses in the basements, or slept in stables. Otherwise unemployed family members often resorted to small-scale and poorly paying buisnesses such as fruit-peddling.
Solitary women and aged persons faced special obstacles. Women faced institutionalized wage discrimination which, with the exception of certain occupations such as clerical work and teaching, almost always guaranteed they would be unable to live on income from employment. Aged persons were often unable to perform labor and had to depend upon relatives and charity.
Robert Hunter in his controversial book Poverty estimated that a typical family of five needed to earn at least $600/year to meet basic food and shelter needs. As the figures below show, the average family was often on the brink of impoverishment.
The middle-class (ex: professionals, owners of buisnesses, etc.) fared better. Misfortune might bring them uncomfortably close to the poverty line, but they usually had steady employment, and a higher income. However these families formed considerably less than half the population. The upper-classes, or capitalists, as they were then called, lived in opulent splendor.
Working Husband 98.2%
Wife 7.7%
Children 18.7%
Taking in Boarders/Lodgers 22.5%
Other Sources 15.6%
Working Husband $620.19
Wife $114.43
Children $334.93
Boarders/Lodgers $240.47
Other Sources $139.76
If you consider what that would equate to today, it would be roughly $3783.15.