Why Working for a Living Doesn't Mean You're Getting By

by Janell Ross · 2010-09-06 12:23:00 UTC
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This Labor Day, there was bound to be a lot of attention paid to just how many people are out of work. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent, meaning that 14.9 million people were looking for work but unable to find it in August.

But this week, there's also good reason to think about the people who are working, the kind of work they do and the pay they earn. Frankly, the answers really challenge the image of the upwardly mobile, sophisticated American worker. Along with the recession, they also help to explain why one in six Americans needs the help of some sort of government program.

It turns out, a lot of workers are poor, or something very close to it, whether they understand that or not.

In late July the Bureau put out a little-noticed periodic report detailing which private industries employ the most workers and what those workers earn. In the America of our dreams — the one where most workers live comfortably while striving for better jobs — most people labor in the sciences, do something related to computer technology or medicine or are simply paid to generate ideas.

Here's the reality: it's called retail sales and it pays an $11.84-per-hour average wage.

That's right folks. More than four million people (or 3.86 percent of all private industry emplyees in the United States) work as retail salespeople. That's more than any other single private-industry occupation in the United States. And on average, retail salespeople earn just under $25,000 a year.

Retail sales workers are followed closely by cashiers. That's the kind of work that about 3.4 million Americans do. For it, they earn an average of nearly $19,000 a year.

See the pattern here?

The private industries employing the largest share of the American workforce don't pay very much.

Now, brace yourself for the worst of it. It's not until you get six occupations down the list to customer service agents that average annual wages top $30,000. That may be the market at work. But that's also pretty sad.

So this week, when the Obama administration unveils its non-official second stimulus, better known as ideas for job creation, let's hope that it features some way to connect workers with higher-wage jobs and not just get people back to work.

Photo credit: Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

Janell Ross has covered public policy, higher education, immigration, race and other social issues for McClatchy, Gannett and Scripps-Howard newspapers.
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