Many low-wage jobs seen as failing to meet basic needs, By Motoko Rich, March 31, 2011, New York Times: “Hard as it can be to land a job these days, getting one may not be nearly enough for basic economic security. The Labor Department will release its monthly snapshot of the job market on Friday, and economists expect it to show that the nation’s employers added about 190,000 jobs in March. With an unemployment rate that has been stubbornly stuck near 9 percent, those workers could be considered lucky. But many of the jobs being added in retail, hospitality and home health care, to name a few categories, are unlikely to pay enough for workers to cover the cost of fundamentals like housing, utilities, food, health care, transportation and, in the case of working parents, child care. A separate report being released Friday tries to go beyond traditional measurements like the poverty line and minimum wage to show what people need to earn to achieve a basic standard of living…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty