Poverty Nation: How America Created a Low-Wage Work Swamp
http://www.alternet.org/economy/poverty-nation-how-america-created-low-wage-work-swamp
2013 is the year many Americans discovered the crisis of the working poor. It turns out its also the crisis of the welfare poor. Thats tough for us: Americans notoriously hate welfare, unless its called something else and/or benefits us personally. We think its for slackers and moochers and people who wont pull their weight.
So were not sure how to handle the fact that a quarter of people who have jobs today make so little money that they also receive some form of public assistance , or welfare a proportion thats much higher in some of the fastest growing sectors of the workforce. Or that 60 percent of able-bodied adult food-stamp recipients are employed.
Fully 52 percent of fast-food workers families receive public assistance most of it coming from Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit to the tune of $7 billion annually, according to new research from the University of California-Berkeleys Labor Center and the University of Illinois.
McDonalds workers alone receive $1.2 billion in public aid, the study found. This is an industry, by the way, that last year earned $7.44 billion in profits, paid their top execs $52.7 million and distributed $7.7 billion in dividends and stock buyback. Still, public benefits receipt is the rule, rather than the exception, for this workforce, the study concluded.