By Bailey Vogt
January 21, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - Nearly half of
Americans are working low-wage jobs despite
unemployment numbers being at a record low,
a new study released in late November found.
The Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan
Policy Program found 44% of U.S. workers
between the ages of 18 and 64 are in jobs
that pay median annual wages of $18,000.
“Places with some of the highest wages
and most productive economies are home to
large numbers of low-wage workers: nearly
one million in the Washington, D.C., region,
700,000 each in Boston and San Francisco,
and 560,000 in Seattle,” writers
Martha Ross and
Nicole Bateman wrote.
The writers added that “getting a better
job” through skills training won’t solve the
issues.
“There simply are not enough jobs paying
decent wages for people without college
degrees (who make up the majority of the
labor force) to escape low-wage work,” they
wrote.
The study noted that 53 million of these
low-wage jobs were people in prime
working-age of 25 to 54, not just recent
high school or college graduates.
