Americas Working Poor

There are so many families who live paycheck to paycheck, money is tight and any unplanned emergency can have a severe effect on them.  But why if a country said to be number one has so many families living a life that is so difficult and rigid. 

Food server. Home health care worker. Grocery clerk. These are the kind of bread-and-butter jobs that once sustained a family with decent benefits and solid wages. Today, these jobs are more likely to bring a life of poverty. The ranks of the working poor are swelling as more families slip into poverty, health benefits are lost and low-wage employees bear the brunt of many corporate cutbacks. That means more employees, many of them in service jobs that are essential to the economy, are working full-time, only to find they can barely support their families.

They wait tables at restaurants where they can't afford to eat, wash cars but can only take the bus and care for children but don't make enough to hire a babysitter. About 35 million Americans lived in poverty in 2002, which is 1.7 million more people than in 2001, according to Census data. The federal poverty threshold for a family of four in 2002 was $18,392 in annual income. These figures are only getting worse. "The real question is, what does this mean for the future of the American worker?"

The fate of the working poor is becoming a major issue for politicians, union groups and activists who are now calling for reform. Unions are launching membership drives and protests — part of an effort to preserve benefits and boost pay for service-sector jobs in much the same way that union muscle helped raise the standard of living for manufacturing workers in the mid-20th century.

The rise in low-wage workers is also a catalyst for activists who are waging campaigns to pass living-wage ordinances, which are local laws that require some businesses to pay employees more than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. The grass-roots effort is having an impact. So far, more than 120 ordinances mandating living wages have been passed. In San Francisco, a citywide wage of $8.50 an hour went into effect in February. 
There are a host of reasons why jobs that once paid decent wages today provide an impoverished lifestyle, economists say. 

The value of the minimum wage, in real dollars, peaked in the late 1960s. That means workers today who earn minimum wage have less buying power than in years before. The inflation-adjusted value of the $5.15-an-hour minimum wage is at least 24% lower today than it was in 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit Washington-based think tank. A full-time worker earning minimum wage would earn $10,712 a year, below the 2002 federal poverty line of $11,756 for a family of two. 
In addition, global competition has intensified profit pressures, causing companies to squeeze wages to cut costs. Unions are not as pervasive as they used to be, which means workers have less clout. Some economists say immigration has added to the labor force supply, causing downward pressure on wages. Immigration has reduced the average annual earnings of male workers born in the USA by $1,700 over the last 20 years, according to new research by the Center for Immigration Studies. The research indicates that immigration increases the supply of labor, which reduces wages. 

There are so many issues that surround this problem that the US is having.  Many families that do live paycheck to paycheck cannot afford a great Christmas this year and the question I pose will it get worse before it gets better.