Who Are Workers in Low-Wage Jobs • Most workers in low wage jobs are adults. Teenagers comprise only seven percent of the low-wage workforce. Myths and Facts MYTH: Low-wage jobs are unskilled. MYTH: Most low-wage workers are teenagers, illegal immigrants or high school dropouts. MYTH: Globalization stops us from doing anything about the problem. MYTH: Re-skilling will solve the problem
• Women make up 60 percent of the lower-paying workforce, even after a slight decline over the past two decades. Almost 30 percent of the female workforce is low-wage, in contrast to less than 20 percent of the male workforce.
• Men have increased their share of the low-wage workforce reaching close to one-fifth of male workers.
• When it comes to education, it is not surprising that the low-wage workforce has less formal education than workers in more highly paid occupations. But contrary to the common belief that most low-wage workers lack a high school education, 40 percent have a high school diploma, 38 percent have at least some postsecondary education, and five percent have a college degree. The low-wage labor force overall is better educated today than it was a generation ago. This mirrors the increase in education in the general labor force.
MYTH: Low-Wage jobs are the ones you see in your neighborhood McDonald’s.
FACT: Fast food jobs constitute less than 5% of all low-end jobs. Low-wage jobs are all around us. Some examples include: security guards, nurse’s aides and home health-care aides, child-care workers and educational assistants, call-center workers, bank tellers, data-entry keyers, cooks, food preparation workers, waiters and waitresses, cashiers and pharmacy assistants, parking-lot attendants, hotel receptionists and clerks, ambulance drivers, poultry, fish and meat processors, and agricultural workers.
FACT: As important as these jobs are, most of us do not even notice them. When we do so, it is almost always in a negative light. In the public view, low-wage jobs tend to be lumped together and referred to as “hamburger flipper,” insinuating both a lack of real skill and social value. Policy analysts and public officials refer to “low--wage, low-skilled” jobs as if the two terms were inseparable. This mistakenly assumes that if a job pays poorly, it must be because it does not call for many skills. In fact, these jobs require knowledge, patience, care and communication. Most of them require constant interaction with people, whether they are a patient in a health-care setting, a child in a day-care center, a guest in a hotel, a tenant in a commercial office building, or a customer in a department store.
FACT: In the United States, for example, low-wage workers are mostly women with high school education and family responsibilities. Teenagers comprise only 7% of the low-wage workforce. Minorities and women are disproportionately found in low-wage jobs and occupy the lower rungs of the ladder within this workforce.
MYTH: Low-wage jobs are merely a stepping-stone to better paying jobs.
FACT: Mobility will not bring significant advancement to most low-wage workers. Even after a 25 year period, half of those in the lowest 20 percent of wage earners had not moved above that group and of those that moved half had only moved to the next highest wage group, still below the median wage. Low-wage jobs, historically have had few career ladders. Today, they offer even fewer.
FACT: As profound as the impact of global trade has been on our economy, it does not preclude improving the wages and working conditions for lower-wage workers. Only a small portion of low-wage jobs are actually in industries such as manufacturing that compete globally. Most lower-wage jobs are and will continue to be in the non-tradable service and retail sectors. Checking out groceries, waiting on tables, servicing office equipment, caring for children, tending the sick and cleaning up for the rest of us must take place in a specific location where the child, patient or customer is present.
FACT: Of course, better education and fluency in new technologies are essential to improve job options of this and the next generation of workers. Yet, these labor intensive industries will continue to demand large numbers of workers regardless of individual mobility, and these are the growing sectors of our economy. In the next ten years, employers will hire nearly twice as many food-service workers as software engineers, hire as many cashiers as they do computer-support specialists and hire more than twice the number of customer-service representatives as they do computer systems analysts. The reskilling approach will do little to improve the life quality of most workers in these low-wage jobs, jobs that will continue to grow as a proportion of our economy. What these workers need is to be adequately rewarded for the skills they already possess.
Source: The Fairness Initiative on Low-Wage Work
For further information: http://www.lowwagework.org/index.htm
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