IN THE HEART OF OUR ECONOMY AND OUR LIVES
Workers in low-paying jobs are often seen as disposable, even though they play an indispensible role in our economy. A lawyer who helped the working poor listened to some of them tell about lives, their work, and their responsibilities.
Low-wage jobs and the workers in these jobs are intimately involved in every aspect of American life. The country’s recent prosperity rests on the growing sectors of the economy in which they work. Yet in spite of their contributions, these jobs and the workers in these jobs are dismissed and undervalued. It is the part of our economy that remains invisible. It is time to take a closer look at these jobs and the many roles they play in all of our lives.
Contrary to the dominant myth that most low-wage jobs are the ones you see in your neighborhood McDonald’s, fast-food jobs constitute less than 5 percent of all low-end jobs.
Then where do we find the people working in these low-wage, low-reward jobs? They are all around us: security guards, nurse’s aides and home health care aides, child-care workers and educational assistants, maids and porters, 1-800 call-center workers, bank tellers, data-entry keyers, cooks, food-preparation workers, waiters and waitresses, cashiers and pharmacy assistants, hairdressers and manicurists, parking lot attendants, hotel receptionists and clerks, ambulance drivers, poultry, fish, and meat processors, sewing-machine operators, laundry and dry-cleaning operators, and agricultural workers.
These jobs require knowledge, patience, care, and communication skills. Most of them require constant interaction with people, whether 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.
Yet jobs requiring these human-relational skills continue to be viewed as less important than mechanical or technical skills that require little human contact.
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. Low-wage jobs are lumped together and referred to as “hamburger flippers.” This label insinuates a lack both of real skill and of social value. Even policy analysts and public officials refer to these jobs by the phrase “low-wage, low-skilled,” as if the two terms were inseparable. This label mistakenly assumes that if a job pays poorly, it must be because it does not call for many skills. Many also erroneously equate the absence of a college education with the absence of job skills. These misguided assumptions preclude us from seeing the real demands and skills of these jobs. But first we need to see how these jobs fit into our overall economy.
LOW-WAGE JOBS IN THE SERVICE ECONOMY
Low-wage jobs are principally found in the service sector. This is no coincidence. In the last half of the twentieth century, the United States became a service economy rather than a manufacturing one. WalMart is the largest creator of jobs.
Less than forty years ago, one out of every three nonfarm jobs was in the manufacturing sector. As recently as the 1970s, it provided jobs to almost one-third of men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four who did not attend college. Entering the twenty-first century, however, manufacturing comprised only 16 percent of the total economy, or one out of every six jobs. As manufacturing has shrunk, so has the number of middle-income jobs. In 1983, these middle-income jobs constituted 44 percent of the workforce. By 2005 it was under 40 percent and has been falling since. Many of these middle-income jobs were in large-scale manufacturing, which provided workers an average yearly income of $34,500. This was especially true for jobs traditionally held by men.
Meanwhile, the service-producing sector has dramatically expanded. In 1947, service-sector industries accounted for only half of all hours of employment. A half century later, approximately 80 percent of the 134 million nonfarm jobs are in the service-producing industries: retail trade, transportation, telecommunications, utilities, wholesale trade, finance, insurance and real estate, federal, state, and local government, and services. The broad service category comprises health services, social services, administrative support services, personal services, entertainment and recreation services, and business services.
The media trumpeted the “new economy” and its creation of millions of well-paid, “knowledge” jobs, such as engineers, lawyers, social scientists, architects, professors, doctors, and writers, as well as a myriad of executive, administrative, and managerial occupations. High-end occupations, in fact, grew from 17 percent of the American workforce in 1950 to almost a third by 1995 and are expected to add another 7.7 million jobs in the next ten years.
Beyond these well-paying occupations, the service economy encompasses a middle sector of jobs in transportation, telecommunications and utilities, and public administration and education. The median wages in these industries are $12.50, $14.01, and over $20, respectively. This compares to $10 in the overall service sector and $11.47 in manufacturing. Not coincidentally, these three industries are the most highly unionized sectors of the service economy.
There is a third segment of the service economy that is the least publicized and least discussed. It is the low-wage sectors that account for nearly two-thirds of America’s low-wage jobs and are concentrated in retail trade and health, social administrative support, personal, entertainment and recreation, and business services.
These low-end service and retail jobs produce 30 percent of the United States gross domestic product and are in industries whose profits doubled between 1993 and 1998. Yet their median wages are the lowest in the U.S. economy: $6.50 in retail trade and ranging from a high of $9.30 in business and repair services to a low of $6.50 in personal services. A full-time worker at $6.50 an hour earns a gross annual salary of $13,570. Even at the high end, a full-time worker would make less than $20,000 per year. But the harsh reality is that more than one-third of retail trade jobs and one-fourth of service jobs are only part-time. And working part-time, these same jobs provide an average annual income of only $6,962 in retail and $9,932 in services.
It is important to note that there are also millions of low-end jobs outside of the service sector: 7 million in manufacturing, principally in food processing, food packing, and food canning, textile and machine operations, and laborer occupations; and one million in agriculture, where workers are principally engaged in fruit and vegetable picking.
These millions of low-paying jobs in services, manufacturing, and agriculture have one thing in common—the lowest unionization rates in the United States. Less than 6 percent of the jobs that pay below $8.70 per hour are organized as contrasted with a 22 percent unionization rate for jobs that pay more than $15 an hour.
And what of the future? The service sector will not only remain the dominant source of employment in the first decade of the century, but it will also be the dominant source of economic output in the U.S. economy. Through 2010, it is projected that virtually all 22 million new jobs will be in the nonmanufacturing industries with retail trade and low-end services expected to account for the large majority. Similarly, nearly 60 percent of the output growth in the service-producing sector is projected to take place in these service industries.
Five of the ten occupations anticipated to have the largest real job growth between 2000 and 2010 are in the lowest pay occupations: food preparation and service workers, retail salespersons, cashiers, security guards, and waiters and waitresses. And of the next twenty occupations with the largest predicted job growth, more than half are in low-wage service jobs: janitors, home health aides, nursing aides, laborers, landscapers, teachers’ assistants, receptionists and information clerks, child-care workers, packagers, medical assistants, and personal and home-care aides. Put another way, jobs that require no education and training beyond high school except on-the-job training will account for 57 percent of the job growth between 2000 and 2010. Only 27 percent of U.S. jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or above.
As important as these numbers are in describing the realities of the new economy, we need to move beyond a quantitative picture to a qualitative one. We need to closely examine what these low-wage jobs are really all about. Many of the old stereotypes mask their diversity, their difficulty, and their importance. We must look more closely at these jobs.
1-800 CALL-CENTER WORKER
“Hello, this is Ellen speaking. Can I help you?” Another afternoon begins. Ellen Nelson works in an Arlington, Texas, airline reservation center. When Ellen was hired, she received two months of training on how to cancel reservations, rearrange travel plans, figure out the cost of different travel arrangements, use frequent-flier miles, take an infant or a pet on the plane, and deal with passenger emergencies. She had to learn the city and country codes worldwide. There is little in print, so workers must know how to find all the information on the computer to respond to a customer’s question.
Ellen works the 3:00 to 11:30 shift from Sunday through Thursday. But she arrives forty-five minutes before her shift to get ready. She takes any vacant cubicle and wipes off the computer and keyboard before she turns it on. She got sick a lot before she started cleaning the computer. “There are always a lot of changes,” she says, “especially on Monday.” It takes her fifteen minutes just to read all the new airline information and changes in schedules and prices. This is time for which she doesn’t get paid.
She then becomes available to take calls on her shift. The calls are fed continuously into her phone, and her employer monitors the number and length of the calls and listens to her conversations with the customers. If she exceeds five minutes per call, she can be disciplined. The time constraint makes it difficult for Ellen when she talks with travel agents who have many clients or with customers who need instructions on how to buy tickets over the Internet. Her employer also records how much time she spends off the phone, called slippage. When Ellen takes time to finish paperwork or go to the bathroom, it is slippage that is docked against her. Too much can lead to discipline or being fired. In order to avoid being penalized, she doesn’t take her two fifteen-minute breaks. “It is a lot of pressure and stress. There is no downtime,” she says.
It’s very noisy inside the call center. It is a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation. Built on two levels, the center houses 2,600 agents over a twenty-four-hour period. From the entrance, you can see all the workstations. The agents are seated row after row for the entire length of the building. Ellen sits in a bay abutting other workers on either side and in front and in back of her. She hears other agents’ phone conversations from all directions. Because the center is so large, it is impossible to regulate the temperature. You burn up in one workstation and freeze in another.
“It is hard to get to know anyone at work,” Ellen laments. There are no real attachments in there. Without permanent workstations, there is generally someone new sitting next to you each time you come onto your shift. You don’t have time to stop and visit anyway. During breaks and lunch, everyone is rushing to go to the bathroom and to the cafeteria, order food, eat it, and get back to their stations on time.
“Some of the customers are nice. That is the redeeming factor. But others are insulting to you. They yell at us because their flights are cancelled or they can’t change a flight on a nonrefundable ticket. It is difficult because regardless of how a customer treats you, you have to be pleasant. That is your job. It’s nonstop. I am a modern-day factory worker making a product that is a reservation.”
Ellen’s job is one of the 3.3 million call-center jobs in the United States. With the advent of computerization, these jobs have become an integral part of our lives. These jobs have such titles as customer service representative, reservation agent, ticket and gate agent, account representative or executive representative, telemarketing representative, technical support representative, and eligibility and claims specialist. They are in industries as disparate as manufacturing, insurance, banking, travel, and retail. Many handle more than one hundred customers per day. They must be conversant with a variety of databases that collect and store the information required to perform the job.
Ellen’s job is considered one of the best call-center jobs. It pays more than other centers because it is in the airline industry, which is highly unionized. The vast majority of call-center workers are in jobs that pay less than $8.50 an hour. Ellen’s job is also a step up from workers who have to call out to people to try to sell them a product. Here, the customer comes to you. But all these jobs are high pressure and stressful. Workers are forced to balance service to the customer with employer pressure to meet a sales quota in an atmosphere of constant surveillance.
CHILD-CARE WORKER
Sharon Bright helps educate children at a day-care center for underprivileged children. During the summer months, when the children are not in school, she works from 12:00 to 7:00 and during the school year from 3:00, the time the center opens, until closing time at 7:00.
There are only four day-care workers for fifty children. Sharon evaluates each child’s reading and math levels and works with them to improve their skills. She supervises arts and crafts, sports, and games, and takes the children on field trips to museums. “Many of the children use degrading language with each other. I try to improve their self-esteem and work to improve the respect they have for each other. It’s a real challenge. A lot of kids just don’t like themselves,” she says. In many cases, Sharon acts like a surrogate parent. She is there when they need to talk, when they need a hug, when someone hurts their feelings.
During the summer, she also helps prepare lunch and dinner for the children. Many times these are the only meals the children will have that day. She tries to ensure a balanced diet, but it is difficult because money is short and she must rely on donated food. “It takes a long time to prepare food for fifty children,” she says. “It is not like cooking at home.”
Because the pay is low—Sharon makes $7.50 an hour—turnover is high. “But you have to build trust to be effective,” Sharon says. “When you work with the same students every day, you understand them, their habits, and what they need. The day-care worker informs the parent about the child’s developmental milestones, whether they see any problems, and whether there are emotional issues that need to be addressed. If there is a constant turnover of workers, it is hard to know a child’s history.
“When you work with children there are no breaks,” she says. “It is nonstop. It is not like working in an office where you can leave for thirty minutes and clear your head.” Sharon is lucky if she gets a five-minute break. She can’t leave the children alone, and there is no one to replace her.
The job requires a lot of patience. “You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to answer any questions the children ask. You have to like children and be active with them. It is not a sit-down job. A day-care worker must be able to relate to the children: the things going on in their neighborhoods, the music, the slang, their interests. You don’t have to like what the children like, but you have to know about it and be able to screen what is inappropriate.”
Educating and caring for young children pays low wages. Of the over 3 million child-care workers, including family child-care providers, more than 80 percent earn less than $8.50 an hour. One-third of the workers earn less than $5.75 an hour. The 1.2 million teacher’s assistants do no better. And these occupations are expected to grow in the next ten years by over 400,000. This workforce—98 percent of whom are female—has a higher concentration of jobs that are paid below the official poverty line than almost any other occupation in the United States. These jobs are clearly important and the workers skilled and educated; indeed, these workers are better educated than the general population. Almost a third of the child-care workers and teacher’s aides have a college or advanced degree, and 44 percent have some college. But because of the low pay, there is a 30–40 percent average annual turnover rate in the industry that hurts the quality of care provided to our children.
POULTRY-PROCESSING WORKER
The noise is deafening. The floors are slippery with chicken grease. The smell of chicken blood fills the air. Workers standing in pools of water, hang, slice, split, pull, and cut chickens at breakneck speeds of ninety-one birds per minute. Standing close together in their hair nets, gloves, coats, and boots, they wield knives in temperatures ranging from freezing to 120 degrees. The plant runs twenty-four hours a day, working three continuous shifts. Workers are on the line six days a week, sometimes seven. These are the jobs that put chicken on our tables.
Bob Butler, the Albertville, Alabama, poultry processor, has seen almost all the jobs in his plant. “The toughest and most dangerous job,” he says, “is live hanging.” The workers grab live chickens with their hands. While the chickens peck, scratch, claw, and defecate on them, the worker shackles the chicken by the legs. Feathers fly and the birds screech. The stench from the birds never leaves one’s nostrils. Grabbing and shackling the chickens must be done at breathtaking speeds—one bird every two seconds.
Once the chickens are hung, a machine cuts their throats. But if the machine doesn’t do it properly, a worker cuts the chicken’s throat with a knife, sending chicken blood everywhere. The chickens then go through scalding water that removes their feathers. The next machines sever their heads and feet.
The hot chickens then fall onto a transfer table where four workers, two on either side of the table, rehang the chicken by grabbing their legs and flipping them onto shackles. The small work space and one-hundred-degree temperatures create a “nasty smell,” Bob says. “The closest I can come is when an animal is killed on the side of the road and has been lying there for several days. It is worse than that.”
Once the chickens are rehung, they continue on a conveyor belt where workers open the chicken with their thumbs and yank and twist out their guts with their hands. During this process, the workers must make sure the chicken’s gall bag doesn’t break. Otherwise the chicken will be ruined. The trimmer, who sits next to the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector, checks the chickens for any bad areas and either cuts them off or takes the chickens off the line. A machine then cuts the heart and livers, but the workers determine whether they are edible. A worker then pulls out the gizzards with his hands while another worker ensures that the gizzards are clean and free of intestines and lungs. A trimmer then cuts off the neck bone.
After the evisceration line, the chickens are chilled for ten to fifteen minutes and dropped once again onto a table. The chiller hangers then grab the freezing chickens with their hands and flip them onto shackles. Next, workers in thirty- to forty-degree temperatures, standing elbow to elbow in water, slice the chicken into parts. It is so noisy from the machines that workers must wear earplugs to prevent hearing loss.
Twelve workers standing on a catwalk then grab the chicken breasts, thighs, drums, and wings and put them into a bag. They must pack seventy-five breasts a minute. Workers’ hands swell from the constant grabbing motion, and tendonitis is common.
After the chicken is packed, a worker weighs it and sends it to a shaker table that vibrates the meat to settle it before the box is closed. A worker then tapes the boxes and sends them down a belt where a worker stacks thirty to forty boxes on a pallet, six to eight feet high. A shipping worker wraps the pallet with plastic and loads it on a truck or drives it to the freezer for storage. To avoid frostbite in the freezer, he wears a face mask and protective clothing.
There are more than 200,000 poultry-processing jobs in the United States. Because of strong consumer demand for chicken, it is one of the fastest-growing segments of the meat industry. Over the last ten years, the dollar value of poultry production has more than doubled from nearly $6 billion to $12 billion. Poultry production employs more workers than any other segment of the meat industry, growing from 19,000 workers in 1947 to today’s 200,000 workers. Although an essential job, poultry-processing workers suffer poor wages (75 percent earn less than $8.50 an hour), minimal benefits, and harrowing working conditions. Their counterparts in the meat and fish industries face the same harsh conditions.
HOME HEALTH CARE AIDE
The phone call came in. Joann Morris’s coordinator had a new client for her, a fifty-one-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis. Her name was Millie. She was incontinent and couldn’t walk. Because her tremors were so forceful and continuous, she could rarely control her hands or arms, and her speech was slurred. That was six years ago.
Joann is a home health care aide. In addition to the training required to be state certified, she takes continuing in-service programs to maintain her certification. In a home-based setting, Joann provides personal and physical care for the elderly, disabled, patients with serious health problems, or those recovering from surgery.
Joann has been with the home health care agency for ten years. Her first patient was a woman with arthritis, diabetes, and cataracts. She was homebound and incapacitated. Her second client had a type of arthritis that caused her to bend over so far her hands almost touched the floor. Her third client had Parkinson’s disease. She also cared for two homebound AIDS patients when a fellow aide was ill.
When Joann arrives at Millie’s apartment at 8:30, she first sits and talks with her, washes her hands, and changes Millie’s diaper. Joann then gives Millie a bed bath; a regular bath would be too dangerous. She gets the materials ready: a basin, water, soap, two washcloths, and towels. If Millie can do her own genitals, she encourages her to do it. “It gives her a feeling of being in charge of her own body and a sense of independence,” Joann says. Millie’s skin is very tender, so she has to be careful. After the bath, Joann applies powder or lotion.
After dressing Millie, she prepares breakfast and gives Millie her daily medications. Afterward, Joann moves her to a wheelchair with a mechanical lift. “It is good for her circulation and well-being for her to get up,” Joann comments. “Bed-bound patients easily get bedsores. If untreated, they get deeper and deeper and can ultimately cause death.”
She is very careful when she moves her. She rolls Millie on her side, straightens the lift pad, takes the S hook and connects it to the pad and makes sure it is locked in place, and then pumps the lift and guides her head and pushes the lift over the wheelchair and guides her down. She continually observes Millie to make sure she isn’t dizzy or afraid. “One misstep could be a disaster,” she says.
When Millie is in her wheelchair, Joann serves her lunch, a meal that she herself rarely has time to have. She helps with Millie’s bills and letters and then changes the bed linens that get soaked with urine when Millie leaks through her diaper at night. She turns the mattress once a week and airs it out with a little Pine-Sol. Millie likes the smell. “Every patient is different in what they like,” she says. “I try to buy colorful sheets instead of drab hospital colors. I try to make her life as bright and cheerful as I can.”
She then sweeps, mops, and dusts the apartment and does Millie’s laundry. If there is a doctor’s appointment, Joann takes her. If Millie wants to nap, she uses the lift to get her back in bed. While she is asleep, Joann prepares her dinner, confers with the nurse about Millie’s prescriptions, readies her nightly medications, and tidies up the kitchen and refrigerator.
Once Millie gets up, she changes her diaper and prepares her for dinner. Most of the time, Millie likes to eat in private. “Her shaking embarrasses her,” so Joann leaves the room. Sometimes she needs to talk. She needs a shoulder. It is really hard for her. After dinner, Joann kisses her on the forehead. She tells her “God bless” and “Have a good evening,” and then she leaves to go home at 5:00. After she leaves, she usually shops for Millie’s groceries, clothes, and other household needs for the next day.
Home health care aides and nursing aides provide for the well-being of our elderly and disabled in individual homes and nursing home settings. Yet two-thirds of the home health aides and nursing aides are paid less than $8.50 an hour. Home health care work is often part-time, which exacerbates the already low wages. These poor wages result in turnover rates of 40–60 percent. And in nursing homes, the inadequate staffing on top of these meager wages produces turnover rates of 70–100 percent. With constant turnover, experienced aides bear a greater patient load, which produces an even greater burnout rate. This vicious cycle is found throughout the nursing home and home health care industries.
Home health care and nursing aide jobs are two of the fastest-growing occupations in the health care sector, a sector that accounts for half of the fastest-growing occupations in the U.S. economy. One out of five jobs created in the nonfarm economy since January 1988 has been in health services. As patients shifted from hospitals to less expensive alternatives such as nursing homes and home settings, there was an explosion of home health care and nursing aide jobs. The number of home health aide workers, now over 600,000, is expected to increase by 300,000 in the next decade. During that same period, the field of nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants, now at approximately 1.3 million, is also expected to add another 300,000 jobs.
PHARMACY TECHNICAL ASSISTANT
Judy Smithfield works in a superstore as a pharmacy technical assistant, a “pharmacy tech.” Her 12:00–9:00 shift begins with a call from a nurse in a doctor’s office dictating a prescription over the phone or a customer at the counter giving her a prescription. Once she has the information, she gives it to the pharmacist to process in the computer. Then it is Judy’s responsibility to check that information and get the proper medication from the shelf. She counts the pills that are prescribed, puts them into the bottle, affixes the proper label to the medication, gives the filled prescription to the pharmacist for her review, and puts it in the proper bin for the customer to pick up.
Once the customer arrives, Judy must ensure that she has the right prescription and that the proper forms are filled out. She must ask the customer whether they understand the prescription, whether they want counseling or have any further questions. Their response must be put in writing.
Three times a week, Judy receives the drug orders that are delivered to the store. “They must be put in the place designated so there is no confusion in filling prescriptions,” Judy emphasizes. “It is essential.” The pharmacist must sign for controlled substances, but Judy fills these prescriptions.
It can get very busy at the pharmacy counter, especially during flu season. If someone has to wait twenty minutes for a prescription that they just brought in, they get angry. “They say, ‘All you have to do is put pills in a bottle. What takes so long?’ They don’t understand that we must follow procedures to ensure accuracy,” Judy says. When people get impatient and angry, Judy has learned to apologize a lot. But sometimes that doesn’t work. “Sometimes they get real upset,” she says.
There are two pharmacy techs and three pharmacists on Judy’s shift that fill over four hundred prescriptions per day. If the pharmacy gets behind in the prescriptions, Judy stays late, sometimes until midnight. Many times she works six days a week because they don’t have enough help. Her feet and back ache from standing all day.
Judy is part of the large retail sector. More than 21 million Americans, one out of every six workers, currently holds a retail job. From 1979 to 1995, the number of jobs in retail grew 39 percent, resulting in almost 6 million new employees. And another 2.3 million are expected to be added in the next five years. Retail workers serve customers at drugstores, department stores, rental counters, and grocery stores. They are salespersons, cashiers, stock clerks, counter and rental clerks, and pharmacy assistants. Many perform some of the same functions as Judy, waiting on customers, stocking products, and answering customer questions. Her pay, like the rest of the retail industry, is low. Three-fourths of the retail jobs pay less than $8.50 an hour. Compounding the low pay is the frequency of part-time schedules. Thirty-eight percent of retail employees work part-time. As a result, nearly two-thirds of the non-managerial workers earn less than $12,500 per year.
RECEPTIONIST
Nancy Holland’s day begins at 8:30 when she picks up and distributes faxes and the more than thirty Audix messages that have come in after hours to the receptionist desk. She then opens the switchboard to receive incoming calls. During the day, there is an average of six hundred to seven hundred phone calls. “I try to be as helpful as possible to them and talk very slowly and make sure I am directing them to someone who can assist them so they won’t have to call back,” she says.
While Nancy is receiving calls, she opens the president’s mail, sends it to his office, and receives, sends, and distributes faxes. She handles the general mail of the organization and marks it for distribution. She files, processes letters, works on the computer, and assists shipping when they need help in mail-outs. She stuffs envelopes, manages the chronological files for the president’s secretary, and fills in when secretaries are on medical or personal leave.
And every day she receives visitors to the organization. She says, “When someone comes in, I put my best foot forward to be pleasant and helpful. It is important to their overall view of the organization. I am a part of making people who come to our organization feel good about the people they are going to see and potentially that will help better our business.
“The toughest part of my job,” says Nancy, “is being tied to a desk all day. I can’t get off the desk unless I have someone to relieve me. It is very restrictive. There are people coming in all the time, so it has to be covered continuously.”
Nancy’s job is one of the many jobs that support business operations. Her job is crucial to how outsiders view the company. In many instances, if someone has a good impression, it is greatly determined by how Nancy performs her job, whether she is polite and friendly, whether she knows who has the information being requested by a caller or visitor, and whether she assists these people in a professional manner. Her job also facilitates internal operations by circulating information, performing clerical functions, and supporting other departments within the organization. Yet a majority of the 1.5 million receptionists earn less than $8.50 an hour. The number of jobs in this field is expected to increase by over 400,000 in the next five years.
These low-wage jobs are the backbone of the new economy. Yet just as Americans misunderstand and undervalue these low-wage jobs, they misconceive who works in these jobs. Their misconceptions help them dismiss the problems faced by these workers. It is important, therefore, to understand who these workers really are and who must reap the consequences of jobs that provide so few rewards.
Adapted from The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans.