America's Crisis of Low Wages
Single parents—and especially mothers—who are raising children while also working in the paid labor market are particularly likely to be low-wage earners.
ALSO IN THIS POST…
What you need to know about the U.K.’s new government
Why women aren’t prioritizing their health
Women make up almost half of the U.S. labor force but our economy is failing them, and this is particularly true for mothers.
Last week, Oxfam published an extensive report providing fresh evidence of this. The data laid out in the report spells out that more than 40 percent of working single parents in the U.S. earn less than $17 an hour. Across all demographics, 23 percent of workers currently earn low wages—defined as a wage of below $17 an hour.
Single parents who are raising kids while also working in the paid labor market are particularly over-represented among low-wage earners, at 42 percent. (Among partnered parents, only 12 percent earn less than $17 an hour.) And—perhaps unsurprising for regular readers of this Substack—Oxfam found that women of color are especially likely to earn low wages. 40 percent of Latina women, 35 percent of Black women, and 20 percent of Asian women earn less than $17 an hour, which—Oxfam concludes— reflects historic trends of occupational segregation and confirms long-standing patterns of gendered and racialized wage discrepancies. It also, of course, mirrors trends we see in the gender pay gap. Black women typically make just 66 cents for every dollar white, non-Hispanic men make, according to the National Women's Law Center.
“Low wage workers, who are disproportionately women of color, are the backbone of our economy. The least this country can do is pay them wages that cover basic necessities—something the current federal minimum wage does not do, regardless of where in the U.S. you live,” commented Kaitlyn Henderson, a senior researcher at Oxfam America who authored the new research report.
“We’re talking about the childcare and domestic workers who care for our families, and the agricultural workers who help put food on our tables. But decades of occupational segregation have meant these jobs that employ majority women, immigrants, or people of color have been systemically underpaid and undervalued,” she added. “This needs to change.”
“Low wage workers, who are disproportionately women of color, are the backbone of our economy.”
To contextualize this data, it’s worth digging into some recent history.
A total of twenty states across the U.S. have up until now failed to raise their minimum wages above the federal wage floor of $7.25 an hour, Oxfam points out. There is also a very strong correlation between states in which the minimum wage is relatively high and states in which the proportion of low wage earners is low.
A great example of this is the District of Columbia. It’s the place with the highest minimum wage; it’s also the state with the lowest proportion of low wage workers. Only 8 percent of the workforce earns less than $17 an hour.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s Mississippi. That state has one of the highest proportions of low wage workers in the U.S. (just under 34 percent of its total workforce). It’s kept a hard cap on the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
Overall, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 for a decade and a half, which is the longest the minimum wage has ever stagnated since it was established in the late 1930s. Adjusted for inflation, Oxfam notes in its report, today’s federal minimum wage is the weakest it has been in over 60 years.
One of the most pernicious problems of the prevalence of low-wage work, is that it’s really, really difficult to escape.
In an article published in the Harvard Business Review last year, Joseph Fuller, a professor of management practice, and Manjari Raman, a senior researcher—both of Harvard Business School—wrote about research they’d done on the pay trajectory of 181,891 workers who started working in low-wage jobs in 2012.
Five years after starting those jobs, Fuller and Raman found that 60 percent of the workers were still stuck in such positions. “People who had managed to escape those jobs had most often done so by quitting industries such as hospitality, food services, and retail, which are classic low-wage traps,” they wrote. And they too added that across industries, women were overrepresented in low-wage jobs and most likely to stay impoverished.
Oxfam notes that the detrimental impact of federal minimum wage exemptions is particularly concerning. The federal sub-minimum tipped wage—which accounts for the fact that tips will bridge the difference between the sub-minimum and standard minimum wage—has been stuck at just $2.13 for over three decades, Oxfam notes. The result of this is that more than half—or 53 percent— of all tipped wage workers earn less than $17 an hour, compared to 20 percent of the non-tipped wage workforce.
Against this backdrop, Oxfam has joined other advocacy groups in calling on Congress to pass the Raise the Wage Act to increase the federal minimum wage and eliminate exclusions in national minimum wage laws, including sub-minimum wages for tipped workers, youth, and workers with disabilities.
Analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute has found that raising the federal minimum wage to $17 by 2028 would impact 27,858,000 workers across the U.S., or about 19% of the workforce. EPI also found that the increases would provide an additional $86 billion annually in wages for the country’s lowest-paid workers. And the average affected worker who works year-round would receive an extra $3,100 per year.
The U.K.’s Gender Balanced Government
Elsewhere last week, we had a chance to digest news of the new U.K. Labour government.
You’ve probably read by now that Keir Starmer’s newly elected parliament includes 264 women, a figure that surpasses the threshold of 40% for the first time. And it’s a considerable jump from the previous record of 34.2% in 2019.
Writing for The Conversation, Rainbow Murray, a Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University in London, notes that the policies of the Labour party tend to be more feminist than those of other parties in the U.K.
“When Labour was last in government, the introduction of the minimum wage affected more women than men, and was instrumental in tackling low pay for women. Other policies such as abolishing VAT on sanitary products were directly attributed to the rise of women in parliament under New Labour,” Murray writes.
She also points out that Labour’s manifesto contains a number of policy pledges that could benefit women. “A swathe of measures are included to tackle violence against women and girls, improve childcare options (from free breakfast clubs in primary schools to reinforced rights to parental leave), ensure the minimum wage is a real living wage, and strengthen workplace rights (including equal pay and protection against maternity and menopause discrimination and sexual harassment),” she writes.
To be sure, though, there are caveats.
“While Labour are better than other parties at getting women onto the back and even front benches, they have never had an elected female leader,” Murray write. “All three women prime ministers in the UK have come from the Conservative party. The glass ceiling in Labour remains surprisingly intact.”
Murray’s research has also found that—like other parties—Labour doesn’t have a particularly stellar track record of being inclusive of women who are working class, from an ethnic minority, or have caring responsibilities.
She notes that women candidates are also facing growing threats to their security. Labour MP Jess Phillips recently said that intimidation and harassment in this election was the worst she has ever experienced. “The trend of abuse of female candidates in the UK is persistent and poses a threat to democracy,” writes Murray.
So no, this election does not mark the completion of our mission to create a perfectly gender balanced society. There is so much more work to be done. But is it a step in the right direction? Absolutely.
To read more on Keir Starmer’s (almost) gender balanced cabinet, I’d highly recommend Emma Haslett’s brilliantly astute analysis for The Persistent. (And while you’re there, also take a read of Emma’s piece about her boldest act of feminism. Here’s a hint: it involves never touching a frying pan.)
Why We’re Not Prioritizing Our Health
Finally last week, I came across some depressing research from Gallup on the extent to which women in the U.S. are struggling to prioritize their health.
The research shows that more than six in 10 women say it is hard for them to do it with a majority saying they feel overwhelmed, and that they’re too busy taking care of others to tend to their own needs. Many also say they’re just too busy with work.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, women with children younger than 18 living in their household are also much more likely than those without children to say it is hard to make their health a top priority. “These data suggest that in addition to having more limited time and resources, women caring for children are putting the needs of those they care for before their own health,” the researchers write.
One final interesting finding in the report: many women in the study do not believe their elected officials are prioritizing women’s health. A hefty 46% say issues related to women’s health are “not a priority at all” among U.S. elected officials today.
You can read the full report here.
WOMEN MONEY POWER: The Book
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