
Almost half of all Americans work in low-wage jobs - whack
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-2019-almost-half-of-all-americans-work-in-low-wage-jobs/
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mdorazio
Key numbers from the study [1]:

44% of U.S. workers are employed in low-wage jobs that pay median annual wages
of $18,000... Most of the 53 million Americans working in low-wage jobs are
adults in their prime working years, or between about 25 to 54, they noted.
Their median hourly wage is $10.22 per hour.

I'm trying to reconcile this with the household median income of $63,179 for
the US. The only way I can make it work is if most of these workers have a
spouse who makes significantly more than they do or if they are working
multiple jobs (i.e. more than 40 hours per week).

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-
wag...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wage-work-is-
more-pervasive-than-you-think-and-there-arent-enough-good-jobs-to-go-around/)

~~~
dv_dt
According to [2], the average household size 2.53 giving a per-capita income
of ~$25k if the household number is $63k.

That seems feasible if 44% of workers have $18k in wages and 56% have
something potentially higher, or multiple jobs are worked as you noted.

[2] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-
of-h...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-
households-in-the-us/)

