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I'm not sure such data even exists. I think it would certainly explore it though. My experience working minimum wage was that it was impressively difficult to

I'm not sure such data even exists. I think it would certainly explore it though. My experience working minimum wage was that it was impressively difficult to break $15k, because the employers were hostile to the concept of consistent enough scheduling to allow a second job. I was doing 25 hours a week retail (any higher and they owed me benefits), and when I tried to adjust my availabilty to support a 2nd job, my first job cut my hours, so I was still only working 25 total hours a week (but I was spending twice as much time commuting). Anecdotally, that's pretty common. Incidentally, if you work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, your pre-tax income at federal minimum wage is $15,080. 31 of the 50 states have higher (frequently considerably higher) minimum wages. So its worth wondering what fraction of the population is in that "low income" group? Perhaps a better question would be "how does party affiliation relate to the federal 'very low income' status?" There's a strong geographic element to 'very low income', and the local minimum wage factors into that. For instance, in the San Francisco Bay area (where many hackernews readers live and work), there's a more than $20k difference between what's 'very low income' in Solano ($47.7k) county and Marin ($71.6k). You'll notice that both of those are well outside what the graph says is low income. But in terms of buying power, they're poorer than folks in rural Alabama.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> My experience working minimum wage was that it was impressively difficult to break $15k, because the employers were hostile to the concept of consistent enough scheduling to allow a second job. I was doing 25 hours a week retail (any higher and they owed me benefits), and when I tried to adjust my availabilty to support a 2nd job, my first job cut my hours, so I was still only working 25 total hours a week (but I was spending twice as much time commuting). Anecdotally, that's pretty common. Ironically this is what you get from "labor protections" from politicians. The employer would be happy to give you more hours instead of paying the same amount to two people who each work half as many hours. That's lower training and hiring costs for them. But paying one person the same amount they're paying two is illegal, so they do the second one and you get screwed into two commutes. Then if you're working part time twice, both employers want you to be there during the busiest part of the day but you can't be in two places at once. You can avoid this by working two different kinds of jobs so the busiest periods don't overlap, but now you're forced into another inconvenience (you may like one type of work better) solely because you can't even offer to work for one employer for the same hours and compensation you get from two. > Incidentally, if you work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, your pre-tax income at federal minimum wage is $15,080. 31 of the 50 states have higher (frequently considerably higher) minimum wages. Right, so the percentage of people in the under-$20,000 group who don't have full time employment is even higher than 75%. > Perhaps a better question would be "how does party affiliation relate to the federal 'very low income' status?" The interesting question is the party affiliation of people who actually work for low wages, so you need something that excludes the people who have low "income" only because they're students or are living off of daddy's money. Probably wants to be something like, party affiliation of people at exactly the 20th percentile income level for the region, or say the 15%-25% range, instead of "below 20%" which includes all the people who have low income because they don't have or need a full time job.
- petsfed 3y ago
  >Ironically this is what you get from "labor protections" from politicians. The employer would be happy to give you more hours instead of paying the same amount to two people who each work half as many hours. That's lower training and hiring costs for them. But paying one person the same amount they're paying two is illegal, so they do the second one and you get screwed into two commutes. >Then if you're working part time twice, both employers want you to be there during the busiest part of the day but you can't be in two places at once. You can avoid this by working two different kinds of jobs so the busiest periods don't overlap, but now you're forced into another inconvenience (you may like one type of work better) solely because you can't even offer to work for one employer for the same hours and compensation you get from two. And in the perfect workers' paradise, we'd all be free to sell our labor for the market rate, and work 120 hours a week at our base rate if we wanted, because there's no meddlesome government interfering with the moral perfection of the free market? </s> My frustration was that it wasn't until I had full-time hours that they bothered to give me even approximately consistent hours, and even then, I had to prove myself to be valuable enough that they let me keep doing my 8-hour-a-week, practically volunteer second job (a job which I really preferred, but it was at a community rec center with very limited, fixed hours). >Right, so the percentage of people in the under-$20,000 group who don't have full time employment is even higher than 75%. The point I was trying to make is that the "poor" stretch upwards into the higher incomes, incomes that are noticeably absent from those plots. $20k - $39k is not depicted, and that's where e.g. full-time minimum wage earners in California, Washington, and 29 other states land. Your argument seems to be that we can just dismiss college students, and trust-fund babies, but also e.g. the disabled, etc because they're spoiled or in a passing phase. In prior generations, it might've been true that leftist, liberal, or Democratic-party leanings tended to fade with age, but starting at least with millennials, that's less and less true. In any case, the actual trend is obscured, because a survivably poor income is not reflected in the link I shared.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> My experience working minimum wage was that it was impressively difficult to break $15k, because the employers were hostile to the concept of consistent enough scheduling to allow a second job. I was doing 25 hours a week retail (any higher and they owed me benefits), and when I tried to adjust my availabilty to support a 2nd job, my first job cut my hours, so I was still only working 25 total hours a week (but I was spending twice as much time commuting). Anecdotally, that's pretty common. Ironically this is what you get from "labor protections" from politicians. The employer would be happy to give you more hours instead of paying the same amount to two people who each work half as many hours. That's lower training and hiring costs for them. But paying one person the same amount they're paying two is illegal, so they do the second one and you get screwed into two commutes. Then if you're working part time twice, both employers want you to be there during the busiest part of the day but you can't be in two places at once. You can avoid this by working two different kinds of jobs so the busiest periods don't overlap, but now you're forced into another inconvenience (you may like one type of work better) solely because you can't even offer to work for one employer for the same hours and compensation you get from two. > Incidentally, if you work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, your pre-tax income at federal minimum wage is $15,080. 31 of the 50 states have higher (frequently considerably higher) minimum wages. Right, so the percentage of people in the under-$20,000 group who don't have full time employment is even higher than 75%. > Perhaps a better question would be "how does party affiliation relate to the federal 'very low income' status?" The interesting question is the party affiliation of people who actually work for low wages, so you need something that excludes the people who have low "income" only because they're students or are living off of daddy's money. Probably wants to be something like, party affiliation of people at exactly the 20th percentile income level for the region, or say the 15%-25% range, instead of "below 20%" which includes all the people who have low income because they don't have or need a full time job.

petsfed 3y ago
>Ironically this is what you get from "labor protections" from politicians. The employer would be happy to give you more hours instead of paying the same amount to two people who each work half as many hours. That's lower training and hiring costs for them. But paying one person the same amount they're paying two is illegal, so they do the second one and you get screwed into two commutes. >Then if you're working part time twice, both employers want you to be there during the busiest part of the day but you can't be in two places at once. You can avoid this by working two different kinds of jobs so the busiest periods don't overlap, but now you're forced into another inconvenience (you may like one type of work better) solely because you can't even offer to work for one employer for the same hours and compensation you get from two. And in the perfect workers' paradise, we'd all be free to sell our labor for the market rate, and work 120 hours a week at our base rate if we wanted, because there's no meddlesome government interfering with the moral perfection of the free market? </s> My frustration was that it wasn't until I had full-time hours that they bothered to give me even approximately consistent hours, and even then, I had to prove myself to be valuable enough that they let me keep doing my 8-hour-a-week, practically volunteer second job (a job which I really preferred, but it was at a community rec center with very limited, fixed hours). >Right, so the percentage of people in the under-$20,000 group who don't have full time employment is even higher than 75%. The point I was trying to make is that the "poor" stretch upwards into the higher incomes, incomes that are noticeably absent from those plots. $20k - $39k is not depicted, and that's where e.g. full-time minimum wage earners in California, Washington, and 29 other states land. Your argument seems to be that we can just dismiss college students, and trust-fund babies, but also e.g. the disabled, etc because they're spoiled or in a passing phase. In prior generations, it might've been true that leftist, liberal, or Democratic-party leanings tended to fade with age, but starting at least with millennials, that's less and less true. In any case, the actual trend is obscured, because a survivably poor income is not reflected in the link I shared.