The Negative Impact of Low Wage Jobs

2777 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Walmart business model and success

What if one had to work long hours, with countless hours of no sleep, a stress level that was skyrocketing, earning money that could barely support a family? There is a woman approximately the age of forty working full time at a restaurant. Her hands were wrinkled from washing dishes in bleach water. A few white hairs have grown under her thick, black hair. Dark bags are under her eyes, which seems as though she does not get much sleep. This is how the average low working employees suffer! Many people are stuck in this crisis. Behind this woman the truth has not yet been seen, but these truths will soon be revealed. The forty year old woman comes home with a backache and eventually when her conditions get worse she would have to go see a doctor. However, there is one problem: she does not have medical insurance and she cannot afford to go see a doctor when she is already behind with her bills and rent. She has enough stress at home and she works hard to make ends meet, but it is not enough. Low wage jobs negatively affect the physical and psychological state of the working poor.

Many households cannot survive with one income. Prices are going up, and low income families are struggling in this economy, which mean parents must work more than one job. Twenty two percent of U.S workforce earns $22,350 per year--an amount that means families of four subsist at the poverty line (Lehigh). Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck cannot afford to miss a few shifts because it can leave families struggling to pay rent and buy groceries. These people work day and night scraping every penny they can earn. They take no days off which can cause problems to their health. According to researcher Davis J. Paul Leigh at the University of Ca...

... middle of paper ...

...tional Injuries | UC Health." Low-wage Workers Vulnerable to Impact of Occupational Injuries | UC Health. N.p., 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 21 May 2013.

Spross, Jeff. "Low-Wage Jobs Don’t Just Harm Workers — They Harm Their Children." ThinkProgress RSS. N.p., 7 Dec. 2012. Web. 21 May 2013.

Johnson, Justin. "The Effects of Minimum Wage on Health Care | EHow." EHow. Demand Media, 30 Nov. 2010. Web. 21 May 2013.

Shemkus, Sarah. "Increasing the Minimum Wage: Pros & Cons." Salary.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2013.

Greenwald, Robert. "Walmart: The High Cost Of Low Prices FULL MOVIE." YouTube. YouTube, 01 November 2005. Web. 21 May 2013.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan, 2001. Print.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. N. pag. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Use of Rhetoric in Nickel and Dime by Barbara Ehrenreich

    1545 Words  | 4 Pages

    In her expose, Nickel and Dime, Barbara Ehrenreich shares her experience of what it is like for unskilled women to be forced to be put into the labor market after the welfare reform that was going on in 1998. Ehrenreich wanted to capture her experience by retelling her method of “uncover journalism” in a chronological order type of presentation of events that took place during her endeavor. Her methodologies and actions were some what not orthodox in practice. This was not to be a social experiment that was to recreate a poverty social scenario, but it was to in fact see if she could maintain a lifestyle working low wage paying jobs the way 4 million women were about to experience it. Although Ehrenreich makes good use of rhetoric (ethos, pathos, logos), she is very effective at portraying pathos, trying to get us to understand why we should care about a social situation such as this through, credibility, emotion, and logic.

    Read More

  • Barbara Ehrenreich's Research and Economic Findings in Nickel and Dimed

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ehrenreich, B. (2011). Nicke and dimed: On (not) getting by in america. New York, NY: Picador.

    Read More

  • Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.

    Read More

  • Nickel and Dimed On (not) Getting By in America by Ehrenreich

    1365 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nickel and Dimed On (not) Getting By in America by Ehrenreich. In the book Nickel and Dimed On (not) Getting By in America, the author Ehrenreich, goes under cover as a minimum wage worker. Ehrenreich’s primary reason for seriously getting low paying jobs is to see if she can “match income to expenses as the truly poor attempt to do everyday. ”(Ehrenreich 6)

    Read More

  • Nickel And Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

    1376 Words  | 3 Pages

    Why should we be the ones to pay for someone to sit around at home? The answer is one simple word, welfare. There are many reasons why people mooch on welfare, rather than going out and working. The only jobs these people are qualified for are minimum wage jobs. As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, worked at minimum wage paying jobs and reported the hardships that people had to go through on a day-to-day basis. A critic responded by saying, “This is simply the case of an academic who is forced to get a real job…” Ehrenriech’s reasoning for joining the working-class is to report why people who mite be on welfare, continue to stay on welfare. Her reports show there are many hardships that go along with minimum waged jobs, in the areas of drug abuse, fatigue, the idea of invisibility, education and the American Dream.

    Read More

  • Low-Wage Life In Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Ehrenreich

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    In today’s society, the question of minimum wage is a large political topic. Many people argue that it is impossible to live on a minimum wage lifestyle. In her novel Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich looks into this issue. In an experiment in which she mimics the life of a single woman, she moves into the low-wage workforce in three different cities in America. Within these cities, she attempts to make a living off of low-wage work and records her experiences, as well as the experiences of the true low-wage workers around her. Throughout Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich utilizes both vivid imagery and data in order to persuade the audience to agree that the low-wage lifestyle is truly un-livable.

    Read More

  • The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler

    741 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler tells the story of a handful of people he has interviewed and followed through their struggles with poverty over the course of six years. David Shipler is an accomplished writer and consultant on social issues. His knowledge, experience, and extensive field work is authoritative and trustworthy. Shipler describes a vicious cycle of low paying jobs, health issues, abuse, addiction, and other factors that all combine to create a mountain of adversity that is virtually impossible to overcome. The American dream and promise of prosperity through hard work fails to deliver to the 35 million people in America who make up the working poor. Since there is neither one problem nor one solution to poverty, Shipler connects all of the issues together to show how they escalate each other. Poor children are abused, drugs and gangs run rampant in the poor neighborhoods, low wage dead end jobs, immigrants are exploited, high interest loans and credit cards entice people in times of crisis and unhealthy diets and lack of health care cause a multitude of problems. The only way that we can begin to see positive change is through a community approach joining the poverty stricken individuals, community, businesses, and government to band together to make a commitment to improve all areas that need help.

    Read More

  • Analysis: 'Play Spent'

    1449 Words  | 3 Pages

    The gap in wealth between the rich and the poor continues to grow larger, as productivity increases but wages remain the same. There were changes in the tax structure that gave the wealthy tax breaks, such as only taxing for social security within the first $113,700 of income in a year. For CEOs this tax was paid off almost immediately. Free trade treaties broke barriers to trade and resulted in outsourcing and lower wages for workers. In “Job on the Line” by William Adler, a worker named Mollie James lost her job when the factory moved to Mexico. “The job in which Mollie James once took great pride, the job that both fostered and repaid her loyalty by enabling her to rise above humble beginnings and provide for her family – that job does not now pay Balbina Duque a wage sufficient to live on” (489). When Balbina started working she was only making 65 cents an hour. Another huge issue lies in the minimum wage. In 2007, the minimum wage was only 51% of the living wage in America. How can a person live 51% of a life? Especially when cuts were being made in anti-poverty and welfare programs that were intended to get people on their feet. Now, it seems that the system keeps people down, as they try to earn more but their benefits are taken away faster than they can earn. Even when workers tried to get together to help themselves they were thrown

    Read More

  • Undercover Struggles: A Minimum Wage Reality

    1180 Words  | 3 Pages

    Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover as a struggling and minumum wage payed American Waitress. Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of “Nickel-And-Dimed” an essay about an average minimum wage worker and how they live their lives on a low wage job. She disguises herself and tries to prove that it is impossible or possible to be financially stable. Barbara meets other minimum wage workers, uses mathematical statics and personal experience to prove that it is very difficult or even impossible to live off a minimum wage paid job and using all of these facts make this article effective and strong.

    Read More

  • Social Analysis Of Nickel And Dimed By Barbara Ehrenreich

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book “Nickel and Dimed” a social experiment of the greatest magnitude is taken underway. The journalist is Ehrenreich herself and the experiment was about a woman, who was recently removed from welfare, would survive on a six to seven dollar hourly wage. In addition to this experiment, Ehrenreich promised herself that she would never use her college degree to land a job, always take the highest paying job if offered to her, and find the cheapest living conditions to accommodate herself with. While immersed in her ‘experiment’ Ehrenreich ends up travelling to Florida, Maine, and Minnesota looking for jobs and places to live on a minimum wage salary. Ultimately

    Read More

  • Barbara Ehrenreich Nickel And Dimed Analysis

    1459 Words  | 3 Pages

    Poverty and low wages have been a problem ever since money became the only thing that people began to care about. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, she presents the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” This question is what started her experiment of living like a low wage worker in America. Ehrenreich ends up going to Key West, Portland, and Minneapolis to see how low wage work was dealt with in different states. With this experiment she developed her main argument which was that people working at low wages can’t live life in comfort because of how little they make monthly and that the economic system is to blame.

    Read More

  • Lew Prince's The American Dream Needs A Fair Minimum Wage?

    733 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers,” also follows Andrew Olson, a McDonald 's worker who makes $8.60 an hour, and his fiance who makes minimum wage in their experience under the poverty line. “Their salaries are so meager [...] that they rely on food stamps and Medicaid to get by,” says Kelly about Olson’s current living status, a lifestyle most Americans involuntarily live. Aside from the benefits wreaked by business owners and taxpayers, the workers living on poor salaries prove as the most positively and heavily affected; the three point nine percent of working citizens treated unfairly by big businesses. “Workers Make Appeal to Taxpayers” concludes with a quote from Olson, “Just because I work in fast food, does that mean I should have to just scrape by in

    Read More

  • The Benefits Of Raising The Minimum Wage

    698 Words  | 2 Pages

    Gitterman, Daniel P. “Remaking A Bargain: The Political Logic Of The Minimum Wage In The United States.” Poverty And Public Policy 5.1 (2013): 3-36. EconLit. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

    Read More

  • We Should NOT Raise the Minimum Wage

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    "American Enterprise Institute." Why We Shouldn't Raise the Minimum Wage. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.

    Read More

  • Being Fat Is Ok Essay

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    Eley, Tom. 10 August 2009. “Nearly 30 percent of US families subsist on poverty wages”.

    Read More

More about The Negative Impact of Low Wage Jobs

Open Document