9 ms·

American life is improving for the lowest paid

101 points by esilver 7y ago

ethbro 7y ago
Headline: "American life is improving for the lowest paid; Come back capitalism, all is forgiven" Article: Low unemployment means anyone can find a job. "By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%." "Low- and middle-income households remain anxious about volatile earnings. Most have almost no savings. Many would struggle with a financial shock of just a few hundred dollars." "Lots of jobs that are being created are in or near flourishing cities like Madison, where low-paid workers are squeezed by high housing costs. Pew has estimated that 38% of all tenant households spend at least 30% of their income on rent." "Katherine Cramer, who studies the long-standing causes of simmering anger among poorer, rural Americans, says “resentment is worse than before”, despite the recent better wages. Rural folk complain that “it’s been like this for decades”, she says. A year or two catching up has not yet been enough to change their minds."
- mistermann 7y ago
  A good example of how the news is often both factual and "fake".
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    I was just listening to one of the Economist podcasts with Cass Sunstein https://soundcloud.com/theeconomist/the-economist-asks-cass https://soundcloud.com/theeconomist/the-economist-asks-cass The Economist is strictly broadcast, no feedback or comments allowed in any medium. The podcast interviewers introduce themselves but that's a rare exception, no article authors are attributed. Their platform arguably promotes the Rothschild/Agnelli agenda and is useful to keep in touch with that viewpoint.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- FabHK 7y ago
  Yeah, quite remarkable. Celebrating a 0.1% annual wage increase over the last 4 decades, one week (!) of paid vacation, and "help" with health insurance as progress. In 2019. It reminds me of the Onion article rejoicing that "Chinese Employers To Grant 15-Minute Maternity Break". https://www.theonion.com/chinese-employers-to-grant-15-minute-maternity-break-1819568485 https://www.theonion.com/chinese-employers-to-grant-15-minut... "Of course, this measure wouldn't need to be taken at all if pregnant workers could schedule their due dates for the annual holiday of May 1," Huang added.
  - will4274 7y ago
    When you consider that it's 0.9% in the past year, and 3.2% total in the 39 years prior to that, it seems more like something to celebrate. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
    - FabHK 7y ago
      Agreed, though the number you cited is increase of average real weekly earnings over that year, seasonally adjusted, while the much worse numbers quoted from the article are not even median, but 10th percentile of real wages, IIRC.
- 0815test 7y ago
  Low unemployment is a huge deal. We should keep in mind that the real wage of an unemployed worker is, well, zero. And a robust labor market means that employees are better positioned to move up the pay scale, to jobs with better productivity, wages and working conditions.
adamnemecek 7y ago
As always, it's probably improving in some ways, getting worse in others. I didn't have access to the whole article but the first three paragraphs that I read didn't really inspire confidence. Also the claim isn't that it's not getting better but that it's not getting better as fast as it is for the rest of the economy.
otaviokz 7y ago
"What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday" I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Is there any other form of paid off time?
- ragona 7y ago
  Correct. US companies don’t have to give any paid time off. It’s as bad as it sounds.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Usually, low-skill hourly wage service jobs in the US have no paid leave, at all. If you work N hours, you get paid for N hours. That’s why getting one week of paid leave annually was described as rare.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    Jesus I didn't know that. I knew that the US had a debate about maternity leave, but I thought the US had paid annual leave. Here in Germany everyone gets 24 working days off, I don't think I'd survive a year without it.
    - henrikschroder 7y ago
      Even for high-paid white-collar jobs, you normally don't get a lot of paid time off in the US. Two weeks, typically. Three weeks is seen as generous. These days off are then typically used piecemeal, a day here, a long weekend there, some days around christmas, a family trip here. A whole week off is seen as weird. I worked at a company where that was the standard, but every five years (!) you could apply for a whole month (!!) of unpaid (!!!) time off. I witnessed discussions on the employee blabbing mailing list where people who had worked there for five years or ten were talking about what they would do, and how a whole month of not working would affect them and some were not sure if they could stay away that long... Meanwhile, in Sweden, I had six weeks of paid time off every year, and everyone has a legal right to four consecutive weeks in the summer, so most people take a month off every year. Not every five years. Everyone. The cultural difference is absolutely crazy. A second-order effect of this is that if people are gone a lot every year, it forces companies to have better redundancies, it forces companies to spread knowledge around, it forces them to make sure that everyone's job can be covered by someone else. This lessens the impact of someone quitting, because there should be people around who can at least somewhat do that person's job, so you are less likely to end up in a situation where someone quitting is a disaster for the company, because that person had made themselves essential as a crazy sort of job security.
rmason 7y ago
If you want to read the entire article: https://outline.com/TegA4h https://outline.com/TegA4h
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  Why this over the Internet Archive [1]? Outline is a private site run by unknown people with unknown intentions. Its privacy policy [2] (a) names no actual person or responsible entity, (b) permits business transfers and (c) permits changes at Outline's sole discretion. The Internet Archive, on the other hand, is a nonprofit run by known, reputable people. (Setting aside the ethics of reading journalists' work without compensating them.) [1] https://archive.org https://archive.org [2] https://outline.com/privacy.html https://outline.com/privacy.html
  - willio58 7y ago
    Outline has a better interface.
  - sergiomattei 7y ago
    Outline looks like a completely different product - it allows annotating news articles in an uncluttered, from my initial impressions.
- ttul 7y ago
  How does Outline not get sued into the ground?
  - krustyburger 7y ago
    Maybe all the staff at the various pay-walled outlets use it to avoid having to subscribe to competitors?
- forgotmypw 7y ago
  American life is improving for the lowest paid MAY 16, 2019 BRAD HOOPER quit his previous job at a grocery in Madison because his boss was “a little crazy”. The manager threatened to sack him and other cashiers for refusing orders to work longer than their agreed hours. Not long ago, Mr Hooper’s decision to walk out might have looked foolhardy. A long-haired navy veteran, he suffers from recurrent ill-health, including insomnia. He has no education beyond high school. Early this decade he was jobless for a year and recalls how back then, there were “a thousand people applying for every McDonald’s job”. This time he struck lucky, finding much better work. Today he sells tobacco and cigarettes in a chain store for 32 hours a week. That leaves plenty of time for his passion, reading science fiction. And after years of low earnings he collects $13.90 an hour, almost double the state’s minimum rate and better than the grocer’s pay. His new employer has already bumped up his wages twice in 18 months. “It’s pretty good,” he says with a grin. What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday. The firm also offers help with health insurance. His improving fortunes reflect recent gains for many of America’s lowest-paid. Handwritten “help wanted” signs adorn windows of many cafés and shops in Madison. A few steps on from the cigarette shop is the city’s job centre, where a manager with little else to do points to a screen that tallies 98,678 unfilled vacancies across Wisconsin. In five years, he says, he has never seen such demand for labour. He says some employers now recruit from a vocational training centre for the disabled. Others tour prisons, signing up inmates to work immediately on their release. Unemployment in Wisconsin is below 3%, which is a record. Across America it was last this low, at 3.6%, half a century ago. A tight labour market has been pushing up median pay for some time. Fewer unauthorised immigrants arriving in America may contribute to the squeeze, though this is disputed. Official figures show average hourly earnings rising by 3.2% on an annual basis. “Right now, part time, it seems like everyone is hiring. Every American who wants a job right now can get a job,” says another shop worker in Merrillville, in northern Indiana. In any economic upturn the last group of workers to prosper are typically the poorest earners, such as low-skilled shopstaff, food preparers, care-givers and temps. Their pay was walloped in the Great Recession a decade ago, and the recovery since has been unusually slow. Pay has leapt recently—with the lowest-paid enjoying faster gains than the better-off. The benefits are not equally spread. In Wisconsin, as in much of the country, more jobs are being created in urban areas and in services. Laura Dresser, a labour economist, points to a “very big racial inequality among workers”. Wages have been rising fastest for African-Americans, but poorer blacks, especially those with felony convictions, are also likelier to have fallen out of the formal labour market, so are not counted in unemployment figures. The wage recovery is not only about markets. Policy matters too. Some states, typically Republican-run, have been reluctant to lift minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. In Merrillville, a worker in a petshop carries a Husky puppy to be inspected by a group of teenage girls. Staff are paid “a dollar or two above the minimum wage”, says his manager. Despite his 13 years’ employment, and over 40 hours’ toil each week, his pay and benefits amount to little. He calls occasional bonuses a “carrot at the end of the road”. He could munch on bigger carrots in other states. Lawmakers in some states are more willing to lift minimum wages. Where they do, the incomes of the lowest-paid rise particularly fast. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia raised the minimum wage last year. (Some cities, like Chicago and New York, occasionally raise it too). Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute told Congress in March that, in states which put up minimum wages at least once in the five years to 2018, incomes for the poorest rose by an average of 13%. In the remaining states, by contrast, the poorest got a rise of 8.6% over the same period. In neither case, however, do the increases amount to much better long-term prospects for the worst-off. By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%. One study in Wisconsin suggests that caretakers, for example, took home over $12 an hour by last year, so were only just getting back to their (real) average earnings achieved in 2010. Expansion at the bottom of the labour market “is finally pulling some wages up. But it’s certainly been much slower in this boom than any other,” argues Tim Smeeding, a poverty expert at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. He describes “capital winning over labour” for several decades, and expects the trend to continue, given weak unions, more automation and other trends. The poorest get some hard-to-measure benefits in addition to higher hourly pay. Mr Hooper is not alone in daring to walk away from an exploitative boss. More of the low-paid get a bit more say on how and when they toil. Many crave a reduction in the income volatility that afflicts them, since sudden swings in earnings are associated with poor mental health, high stress and worry over losing access to financial assistance or food stamps. One study of 7,000 households, by Pew, found in 2015 that 92% of them would opt for lower average incomes, if earnings were predictable. Follow-up research late last year suggested the same trends are still present. Low- and middle-income households remain anxious about volatile earnings. Most have almost no savings. Many would struggle with a financial shock of just a few hundred dollars. Lots of jobs that are being created are in or near flourishing cities like Madison, where low-paid workers are squeezed by high housing costs. Pew has estimated that 38% of all tenant households spend at least 30% of their income on rent. Living in more affordable places, such as Janesville, an hour south of Madison, may be an option for the lower-paid. But that means commuting to the city, or taking local jobs with less pay and fewer benefits. Few workers earning less than $12 an hour get health insurance from their employer, whereas most do so above that threshold. Katherine Cramer, who studies the long-standing causes of simmering anger among poorer, rural Americans, says “resentment is worse than before”, despite the recent better wages. Rural folk complain that “it’s been like this for decades”, she says. A year or two catching up has not yet been enough to change their minds. This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Better at the bottom"
mcrocop 7y ago
But...but... TRUMP!
williesleg 7y ago
Now we can all pay taxes instead of sucking on them! Yay!
Cannibusted 7y ago
The Android and iPhone made a few lives happier. Back in my day, not everyone had a powerful pocket computer that could do Facetime!
- NE2z2T9qi 7y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But in all seriousness, the richness that has been added to my life by walking around with a Library of Alexandria in my pocket is immeasurable. People may jokes about the value of having 24/7 access to cat videos or whatever, but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for Some people. Your average medieval serf didn't care for all that in his pocket: he couldn't read and he'd get the whip if he stood around doing nothing, so he would very much not have sold his soul for something that had no value for him. It's similar today. For you, it's a great asset, but most (and, I assume, everybody some of the time) don't use it that way. For most people, it is indeed 24/7 cat videos. Also, I have my doubts about the importance of carrying it around with you. It's the knowledge and the access that counts (if you're into knowledge), not the "and I can do it while standing outside anywhere in the city". The access would be virtually the same if you had to go to a public library instead of getting your phone out of your pocket.
    - NE2z2T9qi 7y ago
      > Also, I have my doubts about the importance of carrying it around with you. It's the knowledge and the access that counts (if you're into knowledge), not the "and I can do it while standing outside anywhere in the city". I would have to disagree strongly with that. There's a fundamental difference between the knowledge being extraordinarily democratized vs. available only through gatekeepers. Imagine having to go to a library to get directions for a short daytrip or book an Uber a day in advance. The frustration that would cause and time it would waste is enormous. And importantly, you can't separate the "productive" and "non productive" aspects. The fact that you can FaceTime your friends or waste time on the devices is what makes them universally available. How many people in a poor neighborhood would shell out for a knowledge-only device or spend hours after a hard day shlepping down to a library? The fact that you can do fun stuff and mindless stuff with a phone is why the phone is in your pocket when you suddenly want to learn to do something difficult or find out the solution to an obscure problem.
craftinator 7y ago
Must say that I disagree with this article. I've been low income for years, and have had hundreds of low income coworkers, and I've seen rent, gas, food all become more expensive while their pay remains constant, or is cut. Most have at least 2 jobs, and any kind of expensive life event ($1000 or more) will put them out on the streets. Things weren't this bad for us 15 years ago...
peisistratos 7y ago
The article text does not really support the headline > By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%. With exactly 40 years ago being in the midst of a wage downturn. Go back a little more and real hourly wages have fallen for both groups, despite GDP etc. booming for decades in relation (and out of relation as well) to population growth. The wealth created by those who work and create wealth goes to the heirs and rentiers in America. The "job creators" who do not work and who parasitically expropriate surplus labor time and the fruits of that time from those if us who do work.
- will4274 7y ago
  > The article text does not really support the headline While that's true, it' mostly because its a bad article rather than the headline being wrong. Of that 4.1% gain over 40 years, 0.9% were in the the past year. America is seeing an economic boom go on longer than expected and low unemployment is allowing people who left the labor market to re-enter and _slowly_ pushing wages up. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
  - FabHK 7y ago
    You're comparing apples (average) and oranges (10th percentile) here.
- adventured 7y ago
  The real median household income is up over 43% since 1990. It's up 62% for the bottom 20%.[1] It's popular to claim that wages have gone nowhere for ~40 years, it's never supported by the actual data. The premise requires that one ignores the cost of health coverage in the US that is commonly paid for or heavily subsidized by an employer (the employee would have to pay far higher taxes for that otherwise, given the per capita healthcare cost in the US is now ~$11,000 -- $33,000 for a family of three). It ignores pretty much every benefit that employees receive today, that did not exist in the early 1970s, including 401k matching. If companies weren't paying for healthcare benefits, the employees would see their taxes skyrocket. That's a dramatic, obvious, direct wage benefit. In socialized systems such as are common in Europe, the companies do not pay nearly so much for healthcare coverage, instead individuals pay far higher personal taxes, while the average corporate income tax rate is low. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-15/wage-stagnation-was-mostly-a-myth https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-15/wage-s...
CryptoPunk 7y ago
The gig economy is probably helping, by multiplying the sources of demand for low-skilled labor.

101 points by esilver 7y ago

Headline: "American life is improving for the lowest paid; Come back capitalism, all is forgiven" Article: Low unemployment means anyone can find a job. "By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%." "Low- and middle-income households remain anxious about volatile earnings. Most have almost no savings. Many would struggle with a financial shock of just a few hundred dollars." "Lots of jobs that are being created are in or near flourishing cities like Madison, where low-paid workers are squeezed by high housing costs. Pew has estimated that 38% of all tenant households spend at least 30% of their income on rent." "Katherine Cramer, who studies the long-standing causes of simmering anger among poorer, rural Americans, says “resentment is worse than before”, despite the recent better wages. Rural folk complain that “it’s been like this for decades”, she says. A year or two catching up has not yet been enough to change their minds."

mistermann 7y ago
A good example of how the news is often both factual and "fake".
- olivermarks 7y ago
  I was just listening to one of the Economist podcasts with Cass Sunstein https://soundcloud.com/theeconomist/the-economist-asks-cass https://soundcloud.com/theeconomist/the-economist-asks-cass The Economist is strictly broadcast, no feedback or comments allowed in any medium. The podcast interviewers introduce themselves but that's a rare exception, no article authors are attributed. Their platform arguably promotes the Rothschild/Agnelli agenda and is useful to keep in touch with that viewpoint.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
FabHK 7y ago
Yeah, quite remarkable. Celebrating a 0.1% annual wage increase over the last 4 decades, one week (!) of paid vacation, and "help" with health insurance as progress. In 2019. It reminds me of the Onion article rejoicing that "Chinese Employers To Grant 15-Minute Maternity Break". https://www.theonion.com/chinese-employers-to-grant-15-minute-maternity-break-1819568485 https://www.theonion.com/chinese-employers-to-grant-15-minut... "Of course, this measure wouldn't need to be taken at all if pregnant workers could schedule their due dates for the annual holiday of May 1," Huang added.
- will4274 7y ago
  When you consider that it's 0.9% in the past year, and 3.2% total in the 39 years prior to that, it seems more like something to celebrate. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
  - FabHK 7y ago
    Agreed, though the number you cited is increase of average real weekly earnings over that year, seasonally adjusted, while the much worse numbers quoted from the article are not even median, but 10th percentile of real wages, IIRC.
0815test 7y ago
Low unemployment is a huge deal. We should keep in mind that the real wage of an unemployed worker is, well, zero. And a robust labor market means that employees are better positioned to move up the pay scale, to jobs with better productivity, wages and working conditions.

adamnemecek 7y ago

As always, it's probably improving in some ways, getting worse in others. I didn't have access to the whole article but the first three paragraphs that I read didn't really inspire confidence. Also the claim isn't that it's not getting better but that it's not getting better as fast as it is for the rest of the economy.

otaviokz 7y ago

"What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday" I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Is there any other form of paid off time?

ragona 7y ago
Correct. US companies don’t have to give any paid time off. It’s as bad as it sounds.
umanwizard 7y ago
Usually, low-skill hourly wage service jobs in the US have no paid leave, at all. If you work N hours, you get paid for N hours. That’s why getting one week of paid leave annually was described as rare.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  Jesus I didn't know that. I knew that the US had a debate about maternity leave, but I thought the US had paid annual leave. Here in Germany everyone gets 24 working days off, I don't think I'd survive a year without it.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    Even for high-paid white-collar jobs, you normally don't get a lot of paid time off in the US. Two weeks, typically. Three weeks is seen as generous. These days off are then typically used piecemeal, a day here, a long weekend there, some days around christmas, a family trip here. A whole week off is seen as weird. I worked at a company where that was the standard, but every five years (!) you could apply for a whole month (!!) of unpaid (!!!) time off. I witnessed discussions on the employee blabbing mailing list where people who had worked there for five years or ten were talking about what they would do, and how a whole month of not working would affect them and some were not sure if they could stay away that long... Meanwhile, in Sweden, I had six weeks of paid time off every year, and everyone has a legal right to four consecutive weeks in the summer, so most people take a month off every year. Not every five years. Everyone. The cultural difference is absolutely crazy. A second-order effect of this is that if people are gone a lot every year, it forces companies to have better redundancies, it forces companies to spread knowledge around, it forces them to make sure that everyone's job can be covered by someone else. This lessens the impact of someone quitting, because there should be people around who can at least somewhat do that person's job, so you are less likely to end up in a situation where someone quitting is a disaster for the company, because that person had made themselves essential as a crazy sort of job security.

rmason 7y ago

If you want to read the entire article: https://outline.com/TegA4h https://outline.com/TegA4h

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
Why this over the Internet Archive [1]? Outline is a private site run by unknown people with unknown intentions. Its privacy policy [2] (a) names no actual person or responsible entity, (b) permits business transfers and (c) permits changes at Outline's sole discretion. The Internet Archive, on the other hand, is a nonprofit run by known, reputable people. (Setting aside the ethics of reading journalists' work without compensating them.) [1] https://archive.org https://archive.org [2] https://outline.com/privacy.html https://outline.com/privacy.html
- willio58 7y ago
  Outline has a better interface.
- sergiomattei 7y ago
  Outline looks like a completely different product - it allows annotating news articles in an uncluttered, from my initial impressions.
ttul 7y ago
How does Outline not get sued into the ground?
- krustyburger 7y ago
  Maybe all the staff at the various pay-walled outlets use it to avoid having to subscribe to competitors?
forgotmypw 7y ago
American life is improving for the lowest paid MAY 16, 2019 BRAD HOOPER quit his previous job at a grocery in Madison because his boss was “a little crazy”. The manager threatened to sack him and other cashiers for refusing orders to work longer than their agreed hours. Not long ago, Mr Hooper’s decision to walk out might have looked foolhardy. A long-haired navy veteran, he suffers from recurrent ill-health, including insomnia. He has no education beyond high school. Early this decade he was jobless for a year and recalls how back then, there were “a thousand people applying for every McDonald’s job”. This time he struck lucky, finding much better work. Today he sells tobacco and cigarettes in a chain store for 32 hours a week. That leaves plenty of time for his passion, reading science fiction. And after years of low earnings he collects $13.90 an hour, almost double the state’s minimum rate and better than the grocer’s pay. His new employer has already bumped up his wages twice in 18 months. “It’s pretty good,” he says with a grin. What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday. The firm also offers help with health insurance. His improving fortunes reflect recent gains for many of America’s lowest-paid. Handwritten “help wanted” signs adorn windows of many cafés and shops in Madison. A few steps on from the cigarette shop is the city’s job centre, where a manager with little else to do points to a screen that tallies 98,678 unfilled vacancies across Wisconsin. In five years, he says, he has never seen such demand for labour. He says some employers now recruit from a vocational training centre for the disabled. Others tour prisons, signing up inmates to work immediately on their release. Unemployment in Wisconsin is below 3%, which is a record. Across America it was last this low, at 3.6%, half a century ago. A tight labour market has been pushing up median pay for some time. Fewer unauthorised immigrants arriving in America may contribute to the squeeze, though this is disputed. Official figures show average hourly earnings rising by 3.2% on an annual basis. “Right now, part time, it seems like everyone is hiring. Every American who wants a job right now can get a job,” says another shop worker in Merrillville, in northern Indiana. In any economic upturn the last group of workers to prosper are typically the poorest earners, such as low-skilled shopstaff, food preparers, care-givers and temps. Their pay was walloped in the Great Recession a decade ago, and the recovery since has been unusually slow. Pay has leapt recently—with the lowest-paid enjoying faster gains than the better-off. The benefits are not equally spread. In Wisconsin, as in much of the country, more jobs are being created in urban areas and in services. Laura Dresser, a labour economist, points to a “very big racial inequality among workers”. Wages have been rising fastest for African-Americans, but poorer blacks, especially those with felony convictions, are also likelier to have fallen out of the formal labour market, so are not counted in unemployment figures. The wage recovery is not only about markets. Policy matters too. Some states, typically Republican-run, have been reluctant to lift minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. In Merrillville, a worker in a petshop carries a Husky puppy to be inspected by a group of teenage girls. Staff are paid “a dollar or two above the minimum wage”, says his manager. Despite his 13 years’ employment, and over 40 hours’ toil each week, his pay and benefits amount to little. He calls occasional bonuses a “carrot at the end of the road”. He could munch on bigger carrots in other states. Lawmakers in some states are more willing to lift minimum wages. Where they do, the incomes of the lowest-paid rise particularly fast. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia raised the minimum wage last year. (Some cities, like Chicago and New York, occasionally raise it too). Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute told Congress in March that, in states which put up minimum wages at least once in the five years to 2018, incomes for the poorest rose by an average of 13%. In the remaining states, by contrast, the poorest got a rise of 8.6% over the same period. In neither case, however, do the increases amount to much better long-term prospects for the worst-off. By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%. One study in Wisconsin suggests that caretakers, for example, took home over $12 an hour by last year, so were only just getting back to their (real) average earnings achieved in 2010. Expansion at the bottom of the labour market “is finally pulling some wages up. But it’s certainly been much slower in this boom than any other,” argues Tim Smeeding, a poverty expert at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. He describes “capital winning over labour” for several decades, and expects the trend to continue, given weak unions, more automation and other trends. The poorest get some hard-to-measure benefits in addition to higher hourly pay. Mr Hooper is not alone in daring to walk away from an exploitative boss. More of the low-paid get a bit more say on how and when they toil. Many crave a reduction in the income volatility that afflicts them, since sudden swings in earnings are associated with poor mental health, high stress and worry over losing access to financial assistance or food stamps. One study of 7,000 households, by Pew, found in 2015 that 92% of them would opt for lower average incomes, if earnings were predictable. Follow-up research late last year suggested the same trends are still present. Low- and middle-income households remain anxious about volatile earnings. Most have almost no savings. Many would struggle with a financial shock of just a few hundred dollars. Lots of jobs that are being created are in or near flourishing cities like Madison, where low-paid workers are squeezed by high housing costs. Pew has estimated that 38% of all tenant households spend at least 30% of their income on rent. Living in more affordable places, such as Janesville, an hour south of Madison, may be an option for the lower-paid. But that means commuting to the city, or taking local jobs with less pay and fewer benefits. Few workers earning less than $12 an hour get health insurance from their employer, whereas most do so above that threshold. Katherine Cramer, who studies the long-standing causes of simmering anger among poorer, rural Americans, says “resentment is worse than before”, despite the recent better wages. Rural folk complain that “it’s been like this for decades”, she says. A year or two catching up has not yet been enough to change their minds. This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Better at the bottom"

mcrocop 7y ago

But...but... TRUMP!

williesleg 7y ago

Now we can all pay taxes instead of sucking on them! Yay!

Cannibusted 7y ago

The Android and iPhone made a few lives happier. Back in my day, not everyone had a powerful pocket computer that could do Facetime!

NE2z2T9qi 7y ago
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But in all seriousness, the richness that has been added to my life by walking around with a Library of Alexandria in my pocket is immeasurable. People may jokes about the value of having 24/7 access to cat videos or whatever, but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for Some people. Your average medieval serf didn't care for all that in his pocket: he couldn't read and he'd get the whip if he stood around doing nothing, so he would very much not have sold his soul for something that had no value for him. It's similar today. For you, it's a great asset, but most (and, I assume, everybody some of the time) don't use it that way. For most people, it is indeed 24/7 cat videos. Also, I have my doubts about the importance of carrying it around with you. It's the knowledge and the access that counts (if you're into knowledge), not the "and I can do it while standing outside anywhere in the city". The access would be virtually the same if you had to go to a public library instead of getting your phone out of your pocket.
  - NE2z2T9qi 7y ago
    > Also, I have my doubts about the importance of carrying it around with you. It's the knowledge and the access that counts (if you're into knowledge), not the "and I can do it while standing outside anywhere in the city". I would have to disagree strongly with that. There's a fundamental difference between the knowledge being extraordinarily democratized vs. available only through gatekeepers. Imagine having to go to a library to get directions for a short daytrip or book an Uber a day in advance. The frustration that would cause and time it would waste is enormous. And importantly, you can't separate the "productive" and "non productive" aspects. The fact that you can FaceTime your friends or waste time on the devices is what makes them universally available. How many people in a poor neighborhood would shell out for a knowledge-only device or spend hours after a hard day shlepping down to a library? The fact that you can do fun stuff and mindless stuff with a phone is why the phone is in your pocket when you suddenly want to learn to do something difficult or find out the solution to an obscure problem.

craftinator 7y ago

Must say that I disagree with this article. I've been low income for years, and have had hundreds of low income coworkers, and I've seen rent, gas, food all become more expensive while their pay remains constant, or is cut. Most have at least 2 jobs, and any kind of expensive life event ($1000 or more) will put them out on the streets. Things weren't this bad for us 15 years ago...

peisistratos 7y ago

The article text does not really support the headline > By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%. With exactly 40 years ago being in the midst of a wage downturn. Go back a little more and real hourly wages have fallen for both groups, despite GDP etc. booming for decades in relation (and out of relation as well) to population growth. The wealth created by those who work and create wealth goes to the heirs and rentiers in America. The "job creators" who do not work and who parasitically expropriate surplus labor time and the fruits of that time from those if us who do work.

will4274 7y ago
> The article text does not really support the headline While that's true, it' mostly because its a bad article rather than the headline being wrong. Of that 4.1% gain over 40 years, 0.9% were in the the past year. America is seeing an economic boom go on longer than expected and low unemployment is allowing people who left the labor market to re-enter and _slowly_ pushing wages up. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm
- FabHK 7y ago
  You're comparing apples (average) and oranges (10th percentile) here.
adventured 7y ago
The real median household income is up over 43% since 1990. It's up 62% for the bottom 20%.[1] It's popular to claim that wages have gone nowhere for ~40 years, it's never supported by the actual data. The premise requires that one ignores the cost of health coverage in the US that is commonly paid for or heavily subsidized by an employer (the employee would have to pay far higher taxes for that otherwise, given the per capita healthcare cost in the US is now ~$11,000 -- $33,000 for a family of three). It ignores pretty much every benefit that employees receive today, that did not exist in the early 1970s, including 401k matching. If companies weren't paying for healthcare benefits, the employees would see their taxes skyrocket. That's a dramatic, obvious, direct wage benefit. In socialized systems such as are common in Europe, the companies do not pay nearly so much for healthcare coverage, instead individuals pay far higher personal taxes, while the average corporate income tax rate is low. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-15/wage-stagnation-was-mostly-a-myth https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-15/wage-s...

CryptoPunk 7y ago

The gig economy is probably helping, by multiplying the sources of demand for low-skilled labor.