WASHINGTON – One in every five U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level wage for a family of four, according to a study by the nonpartisan Working Poor Families Project.
The result of so many low-paying jobs is that nearly 39 million Americans, including 20 million children, are members of “low-income working families” – those barely having enough money to cover basic needs such as housing, groceries and child care, the study found.
The study, based on 2002 Census Bureau data, classified a “working family” as one in which there was one or more children and at least one family member had a job or was seeking work.
The government’s poverty threshold varies depending on the size of a family. For instance, a family of four with two children was considered impoverished if its income was less than $18,244 in 2002.
The study looked at working families with kids that earned no more than twice the poverty level. Anyone below that level was considered “low-income.”
For a family of four, that threshold was $36,488. The median U.S. income for such families is $62,732.
About 28 million jobs in the United States provided less than a poverty-level wage, which works out to about $8.84 an hour for a family of four, the study said. The median wage for a waiter was about $6.80 an hour; for a cashier it was $7.41 an hour.
That points to the need for the federal minimum wage to be raised from its current $5.15 an hour, researchers said.
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