The Working Poor in Europe

Ranks of working poor grow in Europe, By Liz Alderman, April 1, 2012, New York Times: “When Melissa Dos Santos leaves her job at the end of each day, she goes home to an unlikely place: a tiny trailer in a campground 30 miles north of Paris, where scores of people who can barely make ends meet are living on a sprawling lot originally designed as a bucolic retreat for vacationers. ‘I grew up in a house; living in a campground isn’t the same,’ Ms. Dos Santos, 21, said wistfully. Her dreams of a more normal life in an apartment with her boyfriend evaporated when they both took minimum-wage jobs – she in a supermarket and he as a Paris street sweeper – after months of searching fruitlessly for better-paying work. ‘People call us marginal,’ she said. ‘Little by little, it’s eating us up.’ Europe’s long-running euro crisis may be cooling. But the economic distress it has left in its wake is pushing a rising tide of workers into precarious straits in France and across the European Union. Today, hundreds of thousands of people are living in campgrounds, vehicles and cheap hotel rooms. Millions more are sharing space with relatives, unable to afford the basic costs of living…”