Over the past year, we’ve seen numerous protests and walk-outs across the nation as fast-food workers campaign for higher wages. These aren’t high schoolers working their first jobs either, they are adult providers and often the only income in the household. But the problem of low wages isn’t just affecting the workers and their families; about 52% of fast-food workers are enrolled in at least one public assistance program such as SNAP (food stamps) Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is costing taxpayers $7 billion in public assistance.
According to a recent study “Fast good, poverty wages: The public cost of low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry,” three-quarters of American’s who enroll for public benefits are working, many of them within the food industry.
Median pay for a fast-food worker is about $8.69 per hour. And when you factor in the part-time hours and lack of benefits, the wage is hardly enough to put value meals on the table, let alone pay all of the bills associated with running a home.
“The taxpayer costs we discovered were staggering,” said co-author of the study Ken Jacobs of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley to NPR. “The combination of low wages, meager benefits and often part-time hours means that many of the families of fast-food workers have to rely on taxpayer-funded safety net programs to make ends meet.”
Read: Why You Should Avoid Fast Food at All Costs
The overwhelming majority of people working in the fast-food industry are adults who support themselves, not teenagers. And an estimated 68% are the main wage-earners in the family. One quarter work at a fast-food joint to help support children.
A huge gap between the amount of money brought home from a fast-food job and the amount of money needed to run a household is troubling and has led to $3.9 billion each year in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits, $1 billion for food stamps, and $1.95 for the earned income tax credit.
Workers and the agencies who support their cause are campaigning for higher wages throughout the country. Specifically, they want to see fast food workers—who many people depend on for their morning, noon-time, and evening unhealthy meals—make closer to $15 an hour, at least enough to feed their own families.
Critics say raising wages won’t have the desired effects and won’t save taxpayers anything. As companies are forced to pay workers more, they’ll make do with fewer workers so as not to hurt their profit margin (after all, lining the pockets of giant corporations like McDonald’s is why wages are so low in the first place). And by cutting workers, more unemployed will be forced to turn to public assistance.
A larger piece of the puzzle that many people seem to be missing is that the fast-food industry is not built to pay high wages; there is nothing about this industry that says things should be equitable or fair. It is designed to churn out low-cost food-like products at warp speed and with minimal production costs. If production costs more, the companies may have to charge more for their products.
If the “value meals” cost more, the people might actually start demanding better food and higher quality ingredients for their money. What was the “fast food” industry then turns into the restaurant industry and we all know these companies aren’t running operations reputable enough to call a restaurant.
Rejection: McDonald’s Shuts Down All Restaurants in Bolivia
Study Breakdown:
- More than half (52 percent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.
- The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly $7 billion per year.
- At an average of $3.9 billion per year, spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) accounts for more than half of these costs.
- Due to low earnings, fast-food workers’ families also receive an annual average of $1.04 billion in food stamp benefits and $1.91 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit payments.
- People working in fast-food jobs are more likely to live in or near poverty. One in five families with a member holding a fast-food job has an income below the poverty line, and 43 percent have an income two times the federal poverty level or less.
- Even full-time hours are not enough to compensate for low wages. The families of more than half of the fast-food workers employed 40 or more hours per week are enrolled in public assistance programs.
The solution is less than clear but judging by the quality of food fast food restaurants offer, it is likely that a substantial increase in wage won’t be on the books – not without force, anyway.
Capitalist Imperialism so think about profit … forget human values
Don’t you think that is an outrageously simplified response?
The government, namely the liberals, have taxed, regulated and scrutinized
corporations into the ground. There are great numbers of money generating
companies that contribute to their employees, communities and other great
causes. Those don’t get covered as much as stories like this that make
capitalism out to be evil. There is nothing wrong with capitalism if it’s
allowed to work. Instead, we’ve had many decades of liberal meddling through
massive tax increases, stifling regulations, accounting changes and more to
make it extremely difficult for companies to make money. So, with that in mind,
take out the companies that do contribute to good causes, then take out the
companies that have to streamline and scrimp in order to survive, and there you
have left those companies that truly give capitalism a bad name. I think the
bad ones are in the minority…so don’t bash capitalism on its own merits until
you do your homework and come to a realistic and accurate number of companies
that are bad examples of capitalism. You get the politicians, Wall Street, the
banks and so many more out of the picture, you’d have a more generous society.
The answer isn’t getting rid of capitalism…it’s allowing everyone to keep
more of their money. We have had a social experiment going on for decades that
has completely stopped the laws of supply and demand from working. Thank the
liberals for that. And as it got worse, the politicians then added more taxes
and regulations. And then more, and more and more. Now we are here at the end
of at least a half century of this experiment, and people like you bash natural
laws that make things work because you’re GMO corn fed the BS that the liberal
media and politicians tell you….and you believe it. Go back to when Walter
Mondale, a raging liberal, ran against Reagan…he was recorded leaving a
debate where he said ‘we’re gonna tax these bastards into the ground’. Well,
know what? That’s exactly what they, the liberals, did. And through this
experiment, these idiots have destroyed the economy. They have destroyed
manufacturing jobs in this country. And with a bad economy, you know you can
count on people making less at every job, if they can even find one. Less money
they make and less they take home because of the government (and by the
way…the whole time the politicians are voting their own pay raises all the time,
have the best perks known to mankind, can engage in insider trading and all the
rest, yet put obstacles in place to stifle OUR ability to prosper) means they
live less well. And so, government meddling destroys our ability to thrive and
prosper. You can’t simplify that equation. Though there is a smidgeon of truth
in what you said, you need to do some serious homework before you can make a
blanket statement like capitalism being about profits and forgetting human
values. That is not true for so many people in business. And by the way, I’m
not a Republican.
Fast food jobs were never meant to be long term, high paying jobs. The real issue here is that the federal government has created and continues to promote the double whammy of severe inflation through devaluation of the dollar which has lost 94% of its value, and the shifting of hundreds of thousands manufacturing jobs offshore, mostly to China to benefit Wall Street. The inflation process was started when Wilson illegally signed the no-Federal, no-Reserves Act in 1913.
This has everthing to do with the ruling class of Congressinal criminals (Democrans and Republicrats)……they’re both equally responsible as they answer not to you or me, but to the international Banksters who control everything. A democran (Clinton) set the great Bankster Ripoff in motion by signing the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act in the mid-90’s, which created the stock market and housing bubble, and now the multi-trillion dollar derivatives bubble which will someday pop and accelerate a massive depression that will be worldwide.
The democran-based Unaffordable, Uncaring Act will impoverish more fast good workers (and millions of other working Americans) by limiting their working hours to <30 hours/week. Of course, that is exactly what the government wants, the creation of MORE people dependent on government benefits, who will idiotically and predictably vote for the same politicians who put them in their dependent slave position.
Nothing will change until the entire debt-based fiat monetary system collapses, which will lead to death and destruction on a massive scale, which is exactly what the 12 banking families that rule 3/5 of the world want. It's all spelled on the Georgia Guidestones in plain sight.