A Look at Labor on Labor Day

A Look at Labor on Labor Day

         

With Labor Day upon us, it would be wonderful to report full employment in high-paying jobs with good benefits for all. That is not the case, however. In fact, 81 percent of US households saw “flat” or “falling” incomes over the past 10 years. One headline in early June read, “Worst Jobs Report In Nearly 6 Years – 102 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have Jobs.”

Too many jobs are part-time for low-wages, especially for women. And even given the efforts to raise the wage in cities and states around the nation, the progress is spotty, at best.

The reality is that with the federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour, even with a 40-hour work weeks (which is not a given), those full-time earnings of $14,500 a year will leave a family of three thousands of dollars below the federal poverty line.

And while 29 states and the District of Columbia currently have minimum wages above the federal $7.25 an hour, almost everywhere the minimum wage leaves a full-time worker with two children near or below the poverty level. Check out this table: Women and the Minimum Wage, State by State.

These low minimum wages hit women and their families especially hard. Women represent nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers across the country, and more than three-quarters of minimum wage workers in some states. Of all single-parent families in the U.S., single mothers make up the majority. And 25% of American children have a parent earning minimum wage.

Women paid the minimum wage across the country are struggling to put food on the table, pay the rent, find childcare, and meet day-to-day expenses. Here in New York, nearly one-half of low-income working moms in New York City have less than $500 to fall back on in an emergency.

And the toll is not just because of gender. Over 50% of married African American mothers bring in one-half or more of their families' income, yet are paid far less than white women for their work. Black women are paid just 64¢ for every dollar paid to a white man. The pay gap is ever higher for Native American women who are typically paid 59¢ for every $1 paid to a white man.

An issue that cuts across almost every economic line is the lack of high quality, affordable child care. Only a fraction of the 430,000+ single and working moms with children under 18 in New York State can afford full time childcare. And in many families, women are the primary breadwinners and caregivers. Working is not a luxury but much of it is often unpaid and that which is paid is almost always underpaid.

Moms can’t work if childcare doesn’t work for them. Many single, working moms face poverty because childcare needs make finding, keeping and advancing their employment difficult. Women holding a low-wage job may also be subject to abusive scheduling practices that are all too common with split shifts, uneven hours and last minute calls either cancelling or requiring emergency shift changes.

And childcare workers experience poverty themselves since we don’t value the work they do when it comes to paying them. We know that it takes a skilled and effective workforce to promote children’s learning and development, yet here in the Unites States, we pay most early childhood educators poverty-level low wages. Bargain hunting ought not to start in day cares and early education centers.

Falling into joblessness and poverty is not hard to do. At some point in their lives, four out of 5 U.S. adults will struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, according to a recent report.

This likelihood of this struggle goes up over times, as it does for low education workers or minorities. Researchers Mark Rank and Thomas Hirschl looked at Institute for Social Research data from 2001 that indicated that at age 25, around 6 percent of people had experienced poverty, but by age 75, 51 percent had experienced at least one year of poverty. Since the economic downturn in 2008, those numbers have only gotten worse.

One of the quickest ways to fall into poverty is to have a child. It turns out that 25% of all poverty spells in the U.S. begin with the birth of a new child. One in four employed mothers returns to work within two weeks of her own Labor Day! Only 11% of American workers have access to paid leave through their employers.

The National Partnership recently released the fourth edition of their Expecting Better report — a state-by-state analysis of laws and regulations governing paid leave, paid sick days, protections for pregnant workers and other workplace rights for expecting and new parents in the United States. Although some states are making progress, many are failing to provide needed supports.

And while New York State makes the grade with an A-, there is still room for improvement! Not every county offers enough of the kinds of services families need to make it in the 21^st Century economy. For example, two recent studies found that higher mandated hourly wages lead to healthier babies at birth. And yet, here in the US, the rate of women dying in childbirth is going up while maternal death rates have fallen sharply since 1990 in much of the rest of the world.

There are policy responses to all these issues that have a proven, demonstrable positive impact which are simply not being tried here in America in enough places to make a difference. These are the kinds of issues we need to be asking candidates for office at every level to discuss prior to heading into the voting booth in November. Same old, same old just isn’t producing better results.