Todays rant - the working poor/ hourly wages

[spectrumc01]

It's time to shine the light on a few things about hourly wages.

The first is that the majority of hourly jobs as found at Wal Mart, Meijers, K Mart, all fast food jobs, and other department stores is that they are not full time employment. Yes, it is true that you can make a dollar or two above minimum wage , even up to ten dollars an hour at these stores but you do not get full time employment. These are the largest employers in the US, and they pay less than $20,800 (before taxes) a year to the majority of their employees. I can't tell you about benefit packages because they are only offered to full time employees.

Unions are only in a few of these businesses so the employer can hire and fire at will if there is no union. When there is no union then management gets away with anything it wants, even though store policy is written to prevent those things. Employees have no recourse without unions. A manager wants to get his neighbors son hired, well, you just might loose your job. A manager has a bad day, so you might be on the receiving end of a cuss filled rant, sorry about your luck.

It might help to see it, so here it is....

1) $7.25 per hour X 40 hours = $290 per week X 52 weeks = $15,080.00 per year before taxes.

2) $10.00 / hr X 40 hrs = $400 / week X 52 weeks = $20,800 / year before taxes.

3) $15.00 / hr X 40 hrs = $600 / week X 52 weeks = $31,200 / year before taxes.

In all honesty you really are not going to raise a family on a single parent worker for less than $15 and hour with medical benefits. (optical and dental are never considered as medical benefits). To know what the take home pay is multiply by 76%, because you only take home 76% of your pay.

With prices going up and wages at a freeze eventually somethings gotta give. So when discussing economics and how the poor get everything handed to them, remember the working poor. The guy out there busting his ass to support his family working two jobs (one part and one full time) needs some help before he looses everything.

Q: When a man has nothing left to loose, what scares him?
A: Nothing.
Resuslt : Watch TV for the work place violence, it happens alot.

 

[pinqy]

The first is that the majority of hourly jobs as found at Wal Mart, Meijers, K Mart, all fast food jobs, and other department stores is that they are not full time employment.

Why do they need to be?

In all honesty you really are not going to raise a family on a single parent worker for less than $15 and hour with medical benefits. (optical and dental are never considered as medical benefits). To know what the take home pay is multiply by 76%, because you only take home 76% of your pay.

Which is why very few single parents have jobs like that unless they also have help from extended family.

The fact is that most people in minimum wage earners are either single students, just starting their career, or secondary earners.

 

[Mr. H.]

One of my kids was recently "promoted" to full time at Sam's Klub. The benefits suck believe me.

 

[xsited1]

Todays rant - the working poor/ hourly wages

So people who don't make enough money shouldn't have kids.

 

[JBeukema]

Let's go back to the 50s.

End NAFTA, stop importing sweatshop goods, join the Union...

 

[Mr. H.]

A job is a job is a job.

But a cigar is still a cigar.

You do what you gotta do.

Get on with it.

 

[zzzz]

In 2010 the breakdown of min wage earners is:
Age 16-19=26% (994,000)
Age 20-24=26% (1,141,000)
Age 25-29=11% (502,000)
Age 30-44=20% (912,000)
Age 45+=19% (812,000)

61% of these people are women! I would venture that many of them are single parent.

32,000 of these people have masters degrees and 288,000 have bachelors degrees. 72% of them have at least a high school diploma.

Political Calculations: Visualizing the Characteristics of Minimum Wage Earners in 2010

 

[Luissa]

The first is that the majority of hourly jobs as found at Wal Mart, Meijers, K Mart, all fast food jobs, and other department stores is that they are not full time employment.

Why do they need to be?

In all honesty you really are not going to raise a family on a single parent worker for less than $15 and hour with medical benefits. (optical and dental are never considered as medical benefits). To know what the take home pay is multiply by 76%, because you only take home 76% of your pay.

Which is why very few single parents have jobs like that unless they also have help from extended family.

The fact is that most people in minimum wage earners are either single students, just starting their career, or secondary earners.

 

[Luissa]

When I worked at Kmart I worked full time hours for five weeks, then the sixth week I would have around 29 hrs. It never failed! This was before they merged with Sears and if you worked full time for six weeks they had to offer you benefits.

Kmart does offer some sort of benefits to part time workers, it isn't worth what you pay, and I sure as hell wouldn't call it health insurance.

 

[Douger]

32,000 of these people have masters degrees and 288,000 have bachelors degrees. 72% of them have at least a high school diploma.

...............and 100% of them are murkins.....................

 

[editec]

My kids working night shift in a warehouse for $12 an hour.

Part time, of course. When he reaches 37.5 hours (and he does every week even though they schedule him for 20 hours, they need the laborers) they send him home.

We all know why they never let him work the full 40 hours, too, right?

So who picks up his health care?

The taxpayers of WAshington State.

And who doesn't pay for his HC?

Well, TARGET, his employer.

The system is broken, but you can't much blame the corporations for playing it, can you?

AFter all, if the government is too weak to prevent them, corporations have all the sense of good corporate citizenship of the mafia.

 

[sparky]

broken enough to breed it's own socialism, while sorts like the Kochtopus play pied piper to hordes of tools engineered to distract from the failing capitalisit system

note how we keep up this cyclical tax debate? , and there's always a poster who chimes in that 40% of the 'former middle class' pay little to no taxes?

living below the poverty line does that, along with qualifying for every social handout

and yeah, gee, look at all those college grads who don't want to work out there....

or those folks trying to carry a mortgage they can't handle......

and oh, those fools who just don't want a 401K, HC, or SS....

lazy kids eh?

 

[pinqy]

The first is that the majority of hourly jobs as found at Wal Mart, Meijers, K Mart, all fast food jobs, and other department stores is that they are not full time employment.

Why do they need to be?

In all honesty you really are not going to raise a family on a single parent worker for less than $15 and hour with medical benefits. (optical and dental are never considered as medical benefits). To know what the take home pay is multiply by 76%, because you only take home 76% of your pay.

Which is why very few single parents have jobs like that unless they also have help from extended family.

The fact is that most people in minimum wage earners are either single students, just starting their career, or secondary earners.

Feel free to present contrary evidence. My claims are supported by looking at Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers Table 8

 

[sparky]

NOTE: The prevailing Federal minimum wage was $2.90 in 1979, $3.10 in 1980, and $3.35 in 1981-89. The minimum wage rose to $3.80 on April 1, 1990, to $4.25 on April 1, 1991, to $4.75 on October 1, 1996, to $5.15 on September 1, 1997, to $5.85 on July 24, 2007, to $6.55 on July 24, 2008, and to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Data exclude all self-employed persons whether or not their businesses are incorporated. The presence of a sizable number of workers with reported wages below the minimum does not necessarily indicate violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as there

love how they quiety insert the inflation calculator at the bottom.....

 

[pinqy]

In 2010 the breakdown of min wage earners is:
Age 16-19=26% (994,000)
Age 20-24=26% (1,141,000)
Age 25-29=11% (502,000)
Age 30-44=20% (912,000)
Age 45+=19% (812,000)

61% of these people are women! I would venture that many of them are single parent.

Doesn't look that way to me: Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers Table 8 Biggest groups of women at or below min wage are never married women 16-24 and married women spouse present. Once you get to above 25, the spouse present number is significanlty higher than never married. So while undoubtedly there are many single mothers, they're nowhere near the majority.

 

[rightwinger]

Those who pay a working poor wage get subsidized by government food stamps, housing assistance and medicaid. They pay crap and let the government (taxpayers) make up the difference in supporting their workforce

 

[rightwinger]

My kids working night shift in a warehouse for $12 an hour.

Part time, of course. When he reaches 37.5 hours (and he does every week even though they schedule him for 20 hours, they need the laborers) they send him home.

We all know why they never let him work the full 40 hours, too, right?

So who picks up his health care?

The taxpayers of WAshington State.

And who doesn't pay for his HC?

Well, TARGET, his employer.

The system is broken, but you can't much blame the corporations for playing it, can you?

AFter all, if the government is too weak to prevent them, corporations have all the sense of good corporate citizenship of the mafia.

My kid is in the same boat

Thankfully, with Obamacare I was able to pick him up under my insurance

 

[Luissa]

In 2010 the breakdown of min wage earners is:
Age 16-19=26% (994,000)
Age 20-24=26% (1,141,000)
Age 25-29=11% (502,000)
Age 30-44=20% (912,000)
Age 45+=19% (812,000)

61% of these people are women! I would venture that many of them are single parent.

Doesn't look that way to me: Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers Table 8 Biggest groups of women at or below min wage are never married women 16-24 and married women spouse present. Once you get to above 25, the spouse present number is significanlty higher than never married. So while undoubtedly there are many single mothers, they're nowhere near the majority.

Show me where it mentions single mothers? It doesn't mention children at all in the link you posted.

 

[pinqy]

In 2010 the breakdown of min wage earners is:
Age 16-19=26% (994,000)
Age 20-24=26% (1,141,000)
Age 25-29=11% (502,000)
Age 30-44=20% (912,000)
Age 45+=19% (812,000)

61% of these people are women! I would venture that many of them are single parent.

Doesn't look that way to me: Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers Table 8 Biggest groups of women at or below min wage are never married women 16-24 and married women spouse present. Once you get to above 25, the spouse present number is significanlty higher than never married. So while undoubtedly there are many single mothers, they're nowhere near the majority.

Show me where it mentions single mothers? It doesn't mention children at all in the link you posted.

It doesn't directly mention them. But we can make some inferences. Looking at females age 25-54, this is where the concentration of mothers with child at home would be (any older, less likely to have minor children, any younger will still have children at home by the time they're 25). So 42% of women age 25-54 who earn at or below min wage are married with spouse present. So we can automatically say they're not single mothers, by definition. So unless we want to make some broad, unsubstantiated assumptions about a huge single mother rate for that age group, it's safe to infer that single mothers are a minority, and probably a small minority.

But we can always check (I'm doing so as I reply): Looking at Women in the Labor Force we see that only 7,061,000 employed women with children under 18 were not married with spouse present. That's out of 66,442,000 employed women. So it seems very unlikely that single mothers are a large portion of women making at or below minimum wage (although obviously we expect there are some). And looking at Annual averages we see that more women making at or below minimum wage are part time workers, we can also infer, based on the number of married spouse at home, that a good percentage of women making that little are secondary earners; either married, receiving child support, or part of an extended family.

I do not see how any large problem of single mothers struggling on min wage exists. There certainly are some, I don't doubt, but it's a very small number from what I can see.

 

[rightwinger]

Todays rant - the working poor/ hourly wages

So people who don't make enough money shouldn't have kids.

I have a neighbor who was making around $25 an hour doing construction. Construction jobs dried up and he now makes around $10 an hour.

What should he do with his three kids?