Monday, July 22, 2013

Out of poverty via hard work? Not so fast, buddy!

[We've always thought that the way out of poverty is hard work.  Not so fast there.  The way out of poverty is hard work at a living wage job.  Those jobs aren't nearly as available as many of us surmise.  In fact, more and more people are working hard and slipping deeper into poverty.  It's more accurate to say that the way out of poverty is two, full-time jobs!  Read the following report.  You'll see what I mean. LJ]

McDonald's Can't Figure Out How Its Workers Survive on Minimum Wage
JORDAN WEISSMANNJUL

In a financial planning guide for its workers, the company accidentally illustrates precisely how impossible it is to scrape by on a fast food paycheck.

 Well this is both embarrassing and deeply telling. In what appears to have been a gesture of goodwill gone haywire, McDonald's recently teamed up with Visa to create a financial planning site for its low-pay workforce. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the thing seems to have been literally incapable of imagining of how a fast food employee could survive on a minimum wage income.

As ThinkProgress and other outlets have reported, the site includes a sample budget that, among other laughable assumptions, presumes that workers will have a second job.


Read the entire report here

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think they are assuming there will be 2 workers in the household, which is rarely the case with single parent homes, which is the status of a signifcant majority of those in poverty. Because otherwise they are suggesting that someone could work 80 hours a week, even that it should be considered normal.

Anonymous said...

A job at McDonalds is meant to train a teenager how to get up in the morning and not to support a family.

Anonymous said...

agreed- the problem is that many folks have zero skills to offer companies so they can secure a living wage job.
training programs such as the citysquare computer class are great- however 10 weeks can only teach so much.
I do believe that Citysquare also has low skill jobs that only pay $10 per hour with no benefits like hioliday/PTO or health.- hopefully these are folks in 2 parent households.
the wages earned at McDonalds are about $2 less per hour.

Charla said...

Great!