I spent six years in low wage work. Media and policy debates tend to flatten something that's actually quite complex. Low-wage work isn't a job. It's a whole world with its own logic and norms.
It's extremely useful to have someone with your--dare I say?--'lived experience' writing on these issues. I'm learning a lot! It's also helping me put my own current experience in context.
At this moment I have (approximately) two "gigs". One is writing data science prompts to train LLMs and it pays $80 an hour. The other is substitute teaching at local K-8 schools and it pays $15-$18 an hour. The former, vastly more lucrative job is *barely tolerable*. (In fact, I am currently choosing to write this comment for $0/hr instead of doing that job.) The kids at my vastly less lucrative job are awesome and bizarre and hilarious and I love it.
Neither of my gigs are exactly "low status" or "low wage", but relative to my old job at an Elite Academic Institution K-8 teaching is pretty close. The media, the academy, the tech world, are all full of status-conscious strivers; the idea that someone might legitimately prefer a lower-status, lower-wage job to an alternative is kinda outside that worldview.
Yes, I remember being a little surprised my friend turned down a promotion for supervisor at the fast food place where he worked. He couldn’t explain why. He just knew he didn’t want to. He either didn’t see the extra responsibility as worth the extra stress or didn’t want to be the person seen as keeping his colleagues in check.
I really appreciate it! I’m so glad it’s useful. :)
It's severely underrated that "doing the job" and "managing others doing the job" are completely different jobs! I mean on one level everyone knows this, but I don't think anyone is accounting for it in the utility functions they write down.
This is a great point. My wife, formerly a professor at Carnegie Mellon, is a long-term sub in the special needs program at the local high school. She can only do this now that she's semi-retired. Her full-time colleagues have to work other jobs and/or live at home just to meet ends meet.
Oh there was a daycare worker who had a nice car, her own house, and seemed to travel! I didn’t realize until your comment that she was probably retired and truly only stayed because she enjoyed the role. She was my favorite of my mom’s coworkers.
I think the idea that someone might prefer a lower-wage job is part of the worldview of a lot of status-conscious strivers, but it manifests as conservatism.
For a lot of people, the idea that low-wage workers deserve better can only be justified by the idea that they're miserable. I disagree, but I see how they get there.
Abi - I really enjoy your articles and the topics you raise. In TN, I worked at Marshalls, CVS, Outback Steakhouse, child care, etc. I didn’t get a job that paid beyond federal minimum wage until I was out of college. IMO, two things that aren’t talked about enough in the media also related which I am sure you are well aware of:
1. People use proof of income to qualify for SNAP, housing subsidies, and other benefits. I admittedly have not used the programs myself but had staff that did. One time I managed to get an employee a modest raise, but they weren’t really that thrilled because they expected it would reduce their benefits. Seems like social safety net programs that are not means-tested would be ideal. Seems like this should be a more talked about issue by both sides
2. States where the minimum wage is low, taxes are regressive, and people are particularly car-dependent, imo, really exacerbate the challenges for people who do want to raise their standard of living. The media might mention the minimum wage, but I don’t hear much about the other topics.
Totally agree! For some people, their life is really on the line if a boost in income causes them to lose Medicaid or SSI! I’d much rather cash transfers that higher income before phase outs! I think these would probably also get more buy-in if they’re available to more people? There’s probably some savings to be had from combining SNAP TANF and other programs into a simpler to apply for and simpler to understand cash transfer. But I’m still investigating this! I want to see how Sweden works in particular
I feel like the car one is HUGE. It’s a $12k a year tax, and pretty regressive because for poorer people, it’s a bigger chunk of their income. Everyone needs a functioning car which is a pretty hard feat when you’re making under $15 an hour! Car repairs are expensive and that’s also assuming you are healthy, can drive, and have no prior DUIs. I’m very very into walkable neighborhoods. I even did a TEDx talk on road fatalities
I think part of this is the logic of political advocacy and social movements, which often necessarily advance framings that don't strictly make sense but may be the most efficient way to advance an agenda. It's easier, and higher leverage, to build a national labor rights campaign against Starbucks than against individual local coffee shops with worse labor standards. It was always like this in the labor movement, and my sense is that working people always noticed (who ever felt longshoremen making ~5x median income was fair?), but the difference between before and now is that before -- say in the 1934-1973 period -- the labor movement was winning -- and delivering on a broad new deal social and civil rights social agenda, and now it's been losing slowly for 50 years.
True, going after small coffee shops wouldn’t be the ideal either.
I’d love if broad goals were back as centerpieces. I think ACA was a pretty great win. I wish we were looking at things like cash transfers, universal daycare/pre-k, and making healthcare more affordable so that you’re not worse off for not having employer based care.
Also, I agree - working class people did notice. I remember people saying “democrats aren’t ideal, republicans are worse.” I never really followed up about why - I wasn’t politically aware until college. I think this is also in a broader context where most people don’t follow politics much.
Those policies sound great, but where does the political coalition needed to win and protect them actually come from? My sense is it won't emerge from the goodwill of individual politicians or commentators, it'll require large organizations with genuine roots in the working class. I'm not sure how you rebuild those, but campaigns like the fight for $15 in fast food remind me of the parochial, industry-specific organizing that built the original labor movement. Those early campaigns were often unpopular with workers outside the targeted sector, yet in aggregate they produced real institutional power for the working class.
So while I don't have good answers here, I'm skeptical that a campaign turning off many workers is by itself evidence of bad strategy. Sometimes that's exactly what durable institution-building looks like in its early stages.
I appreciate this thoughtful pushback, but I gotta ask--when are the "early stages" gonna end? I feel like these same debates have been going on for my entire adult life, and instead of coalessing into a national movement I've only seen the left grow more and more fractured.
The labor rights movement of 100 years ago took place against a backdrop of a) explosive industrial growth, b) much weaker labor protections, and c) an astronomically smaller welfare state. It's not at all clear to me why the same playbook should work today.
Definitely not clear to me what playbook should work or that the working class will ever become the political force it was during the New Deal / post-war period, for the reasons you state. But if we believe that we need an organized working class that successfully advocates for its own interests on the political stage, and optimistically assume this is how the arc of history bends, by any definition we're in the early stages of that, no?
This is a great point, and it took me a couple days to think about it. It seems like the fast food push was mostly in California and in New York but didn't quite expand. These are definitely not the only two states that have strong unions or sector-specific protections, but maybe something about America makes sector or union specific goalsharder.
One thing that makes me hopeful is that, at least according to the New York Times, to win the presidency, you need the working class. Even if the working class doesn't really set agendas, they have to be on board. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/opinion/democrats-rich-poor.html
A potential playbook that both the middle and working classes would like:
1. Making it much simpler and easier to have employee-owned structures as the default way to start or exit a business. (A Harvard study modeled that if all US businesses were 30% employee-owned, the share of wealth held by the bottom 50% of Americans and the median wealth for those without high school diplomas would quadruple, with only a 1% decline in wealth for the 90th–99th percentile. (https://archive.is/my96y&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1773503789055980&usg=AOvVaw3mlOD7R078MZkT5RxGtGPw)
2. Expanding health insurance subsidies so that people who switch jobs often or freelancers or low income people don't feel a penalty for being on ACA Marketplace.
3. Free pre-K and daycare.
4. Welfare that is easier to understand, sign up for, and maintain. E.g. instead of SNAP + TANF, replace it with cash transfers that can help people up to 4x the poverty level, not just 1-2x.
My assumption right now is that things that broadly help the working class are more attainable than things that focus on labor. I'd be very curious for others' thoughts on this.
Modern society is just one giant gap-plugging operation. Optimize this piece, fill that hole, grab the next thing. I managed grocery stores for years early in my career alongside blue-collar workers and watched this up close. The massive energy that goes into managing all of it (the scheduling, the switching, the figuring out what's tolerable this week), that's the hidden tax nobody counts. Great read, Abi
I'm so curious to know, since I've not been on the management side of this work: why are shifts different every week? Is it really so that when people ask for a day off, it's easier to get coverage?
Coverage is part of it but labor cost control is the bigger driver. It's what schedulers actually get graded on. Variable scheduling keeps part-time and full-time hours within budgeted limits and helps avoid benefits eligibility thresholds. It also lets managers flex headcount up or down based on projected sales.
We'd deliberately overstaff so customers never felt the burn of unhappiness from one register open, but too many people standing around doing nothing is instant labor cost pressure. Gets complicated fast when turnover is high, everyone has different availability, and you're trying to hit predicted labor hours without going over budget.
Yep—same time last year is the baseline, but more layers on top of that. Day of week patterns, local events, weather, promotional calendar, even school schedules in family-heavy stores all factored in.
And yes on benefits thresholds—full-time usually kicks in around 32-40 hours depending on the company and state. Keeping part-timers just under that line is a deliberate scheduling strategy.
There’s also usually a fixed number of full-time benefit slots per store, so full-time status can become a carrot. Work hard, show loyalty, maybe you get the slot when it opens. It’s a retention tool dressed up as a reward.
Are there any thresholds around part time? I never understood why my job at Hot Topic never gave me more than 8 to 10 hours a week or so. When I wanted 12 or 15.
No universal minimum for part-time hours the way there’s a maximum before benefits kick in. Companies can legally schedule someone for 4 hours a week and call them employed. The floor is basically whatever the manager decides.
Specialty retail also runs on thin labor budgets so there’s just less to go around…sometimes they hire more bodies than hours to keep coverage flexible and everyone gets a small slice.
Personally I always tried to give people what they asked for. If someone wanted hours and I knew they were a hard worker, I found a way. But every manager is different.
I'd love to hear more about labor policy that would actually help people in low-wage occupations.
Considering things like ban-the-box policies and minimum wage, the effects of policy on labor can be unintuitive. My bias is to assume that most regulations and "protections" are harmful, but perhaps there are some policies that would help with this kind of fluid employment environment?
I’m most excited about things that make your life better regardless of where you work or if you work.
- cash transfers (why is so much of our poverty alleviation via income tax returns?)
- affordable / subsidized health insurance that doesn’t depend on your employer.
- double how much housing we have and make things like narrow apartments, triplexes, single room occupancies (which were mostly used by retirees and working poor even up until the 1980s before mostly banned). I feel safer knowing there’s a cheap cheap way to live if I someday can’t afford an entire apartment.
I’m still thinking though. There’s probably way more. We definitely have to protect the Pell grant. The extra cash it gives you if your community college is cheaper than the grant is such a gift.
Things we have to protect: free and reduced school lunches and SNAP
Thanks for flagging ban-the-box! I wasn’t familiar with it. It sounds great - though I do hope it doesn’t mean that people with records end up spending more time in rounds of interviews with people who will say no later. I think overall it sounds like it will help though!
Agree with all of this! I'd add that your pieces on regulations blocking low cost food options fit into this framework too.
I see ban-the-box policies as a cautionary tale actually! A well meaning policy that seems to have increased discrimination and made it harder for minorities to get employment.
Yeah, it seems that employers who couldn't find out about someones record because of ban-the-box discriminated against people of color. Being able to do a background check lowered the risk of hiring.
Though to be clear this question isn't fully settled, different papers find different effects.
“Agan and Starr sent out 15,000 fictitious online job applications to companies in those areas with racially stereotypical names on the job applications. Prior to the implementation of Ban the Box laws in New Jersey and New York City, the gap in the callback rate between the job applications with stereotypically black names and stereotypically white names was 7 percent. After the implementation of Ban the Box laws, the racial gap in the callback rate increased to 45 percent”
This is also a good place to mention the unfortunate decisions years ago to fund Social Security (and more unfortunate still because it happened ater) Medicare with a tax on wages. And to tie health insurance (enterely before ACA and still preferentially) to employment. Both of those decisios make employers less likely to hire low wage workers and the later to hire into jobs that trigger requirements to "provide" health nsurance coverage.
A big issue in policy circles is the idea that people at the lower end of the wage scale face effective marginal tax rates up to 100% in some cases due to benefit withdrawal on means test befits.
Especially in the case of single moms there are a lot of government benefits (healthcare, childcare, rent assistance, etc) that scale back or disappear as people earn more money at the low end.
There can also be a big marriage penalty since having two incomes often drives people above certain thresholds (Medicaid for instance). So a lot of people don’t get married.
Is this something that people think about at the lower end? The data makes it seem like it alters behavior, but I’ve never interviewed someone about it. People keep doing these jobs and try moving up the ladder even though as an outside observer it almost seems pointless (unless you can take the earnings under the table in cash).
Yes I’ve seen this. I’ve seen someone lament they can’t get a substantial job because they’d jeopardize SSI or Medicaid - and if they lost it, the new job wouldn’t make enough so they could afford the medical needs they have that led them to qualify. (In Texas, for the most part, single adults only qualify for Medicaid if they are both disabled AND low income.)
I’ve seen people say they only live together and aren’t married because of their spouse qualifying for Medicaid but only if they’re on their own yeah.
I kind of thought it was normal. People don’t often go into the reason why. It’s like too detailed or complicated to fully explain the context during friendly conversation (unless one person is really really curious.) I’ve mostly seen it around Medicaid and SSI.
This is fascinating. The decision for women to work seems especially sensitive to tax policies! Love your quote about “it’s like a subsidize for married women to not work”
“Republicans don't want to admit that cutting taxes will lead more married women to get jobs, lest they split economic libertarians and social conservatives. So everyone stays mum.” - this is super interesting
I would say it is not just college educated leading the thinking but men in union style jobs. It is nearly impossible too get the political class off of their visions of past glory re manufacturing.
I remember when this economy started up here back in the '80s. I thought it was fortunate, there hadn't been so many jobs until all these retail joints opened up here. You couldn't BUY a job, if you had no specific experience. Now you could have three of them. And people did that, at least for a while.
It's extremely useful to have someone with your--dare I say?--'lived experience' writing on these issues. I'm learning a lot! It's also helping me put my own current experience in context.
At this moment I have (approximately) two "gigs". One is writing data science prompts to train LLMs and it pays $80 an hour. The other is substitute teaching at local K-8 schools and it pays $15-$18 an hour. The former, vastly more lucrative job is *barely tolerable*. (In fact, I am currently choosing to write this comment for $0/hr instead of doing that job.) The kids at my vastly less lucrative job are awesome and bizarre and hilarious and I love it.
Neither of my gigs are exactly "low status" or "low wage", but relative to my old job at an Elite Academic Institution K-8 teaching is pretty close. The media, the academy, the tech world, are all full of status-conscious strivers; the idea that someone might legitimately prefer a lower-status, lower-wage job to an alternative is kinda outside that worldview.
Yes, I remember being a little surprised my friend turned down a promotion for supervisor at the fast food place where he worked. He couldn’t explain why. He just knew he didn’t want to. He either didn’t see the extra responsibility as worth the extra stress or didn’t want to be the person seen as keeping his colleagues in check.
I really appreciate it! I’m so glad it’s useful. :)
It's severely underrated that "doing the job" and "managing others doing the job" are completely different jobs! I mean on one level everyone knows this, but I don't think anyone is accounting for it in the utility functions they write down.
This is a great point. My wife, formerly a professor at Carnegie Mellon, is a long-term sub in the special needs program at the local high school. She can only do this now that she's semi-retired. Her full-time colleagues have to work other jobs and/or live at home just to meet ends meet.
Oh there was a daycare worker who had a nice car, her own house, and seemed to travel! I didn’t realize until your comment that she was probably retired and truly only stayed because she enjoyed the role. She was my favorite of my mom’s coworkers.
I think the idea that someone might prefer a lower-wage job is part of the worldview of a lot of status-conscious strivers, but it manifests as conservatism.
For a lot of people, the idea that low-wage workers deserve better can only be justified by the idea that they're miserable. I disagree, but I see how they get there.
1000% thank you!
Abi - I really enjoy your articles and the topics you raise. In TN, I worked at Marshalls, CVS, Outback Steakhouse, child care, etc. I didn’t get a job that paid beyond federal minimum wage until I was out of college. IMO, two things that aren’t talked about enough in the media also related which I am sure you are well aware of:
1. People use proof of income to qualify for SNAP, housing subsidies, and other benefits. I admittedly have not used the programs myself but had staff that did. One time I managed to get an employee a modest raise, but they weren’t really that thrilled because they expected it would reduce their benefits. Seems like social safety net programs that are not means-tested would be ideal. Seems like this should be a more talked about issue by both sides
2. States where the minimum wage is low, taxes are regressive, and people are particularly car-dependent, imo, really exacerbate the challenges for people who do want to raise their standard of living. The media might mention the minimum wage, but I don’t hear much about the other topics.
Love your stuff!
Economists have worried about the implicit tax rates in means-tested programs as long as I can remember. It's a very hard problem to solve.
Thanks Darren!!
Totally agree! For some people, their life is really on the line if a boost in income causes them to lose Medicaid or SSI! I’d much rather cash transfers that higher income before phase outs! I think these would probably also get more buy-in if they’re available to more people? There’s probably some savings to be had from combining SNAP TANF and other programs into a simpler to apply for and simpler to understand cash transfer. But I’m still investigating this! I want to see how Sweden works in particular
I feel like the car one is HUGE. It’s a $12k a year tax, and pretty regressive because for poorer people, it’s a bigger chunk of their income. Everyone needs a functioning car which is a pretty hard feat when you’re making under $15 an hour! Car repairs are expensive and that’s also assuming you are healthy, can drive, and have no prior DUIs. I’m very very into walkable neighborhoods. I even did a TEDx talk on road fatalities
I think part of this is the logic of political advocacy and social movements, which often necessarily advance framings that don't strictly make sense but may be the most efficient way to advance an agenda. It's easier, and higher leverage, to build a national labor rights campaign against Starbucks than against individual local coffee shops with worse labor standards. It was always like this in the labor movement, and my sense is that working people always noticed (who ever felt longshoremen making ~5x median income was fair?), but the difference between before and now is that before -- say in the 1934-1973 period -- the labor movement was winning -- and delivering on a broad new deal social and civil rights social agenda, and now it's been losing slowly for 50 years.
True, going after small coffee shops wouldn’t be the ideal either.
I’d love if broad goals were back as centerpieces. I think ACA was a pretty great win. I wish we were looking at things like cash transfers, universal daycare/pre-k, and making healthcare more affordable so that you’re not worse off for not having employer based care.
Also, I agree - working class people did notice. I remember people saying “democrats aren’t ideal, republicans are worse.” I never really followed up about why - I wasn’t politically aware until college. I think this is also in a broader context where most people don’t follow politics much.
Those policies sound great, but where does the political coalition needed to win and protect them actually come from? My sense is it won't emerge from the goodwill of individual politicians or commentators, it'll require large organizations with genuine roots in the working class. I'm not sure how you rebuild those, but campaigns like the fight for $15 in fast food remind me of the parochial, industry-specific organizing that built the original labor movement. Those early campaigns were often unpopular with workers outside the targeted sector, yet in aggregate they produced real institutional power for the working class.
So while I don't have good answers here, I'm skeptical that a campaign turning off many workers is by itself evidence of bad strategy. Sometimes that's exactly what durable institution-building looks like in its early stages.
I appreciate this thoughtful pushback, but I gotta ask--when are the "early stages" gonna end? I feel like these same debates have been going on for my entire adult life, and instead of coalessing into a national movement I've only seen the left grow more and more fractured.
The labor rights movement of 100 years ago took place against a backdrop of a) explosive industrial growth, b) much weaker labor protections, and c) an astronomically smaller welfare state. It's not at all clear to me why the same playbook should work today.
Definitely not clear to me what playbook should work or that the working class will ever become the political force it was during the New Deal / post-war period, for the reasons you state. But if we believe that we need an organized working class that successfully advocates for its own interests on the political stage, and optimistically assume this is how the arc of history bends, by any definition we're in the early stages of that, no?
This is a great point, and it took me a couple days to think about it. It seems like the fast food push was mostly in California and in New York but didn't quite expand. These are definitely not the only two states that have strong unions or sector-specific protections, but maybe something about America makes sector or union specific goalsharder.
One thing that makes me hopeful is that, at least according to the New York Times, to win the presidency, you need the working class. Even if the working class doesn't really set agendas, they have to be on board. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/opinion/democrats-rich-poor.html
A potential playbook that both the middle and working classes would like:
1. Making it much simpler and easier to have employee-owned structures as the default way to start or exit a business. (A Harvard study modeled that if all US businesses were 30% employee-owned, the share of wealth held by the bottom 50% of Americans and the median wealth for those without high school diplomas would quadruple, with only a 1% decline in wealth for the 90th–99th percentile. (https://archive.is/my96y&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1773503789055980&usg=AOvVaw3mlOD7R078MZkT5RxGtGPw)
2. Expanding health insurance subsidies so that people who switch jobs often or freelancers or low income people don't feel a penalty for being on ACA Marketplace.
3. Free pre-K and daycare.
4. Welfare that is easier to understand, sign up for, and maintain. E.g. instead of SNAP + TANF, replace it with cash transfers that can help people up to 4x the poverty level, not just 1-2x.
My assumption right now is that things that broadly help the working class are more attainable than things that focus on labor. I'd be very curious for others' thoughts on this.
Great piece!
Modern society is just one giant gap-plugging operation. Optimize this piece, fill that hole, grab the next thing. I managed grocery stores for years early in my career alongside blue-collar workers and watched this up close. The massive energy that goes into managing all of it (the scheduling, the switching, the figuring out what's tolerable this week), that's the hidden tax nobody counts. Great read, Abi
Thanks so much Quy! :) Yes absolutely.
I'm so curious to know, since I've not been on the management side of this work: why are shifts different every week? Is it really so that when people ask for a day off, it's easier to get coverage?
Coverage is part of it but labor cost control is the bigger driver. It's what schedulers actually get graded on. Variable scheduling keeps part-time and full-time hours within budgeted limits and helps avoid benefits eligibility thresholds. It also lets managers flex headcount up or down based on projected sales.
We'd deliberately overstaff so customers never felt the burn of unhappiness from one register open, but too many people standing around doing nothing is instant labor cost pressure. Gets complicated fast when turnover is high, everyone has different availability, and you're trying to hit predicted labor hours without going over budget.
What do you predict demand from? Same time last year?
Are there benefits threshold for full time people?
Thank you so so so much!
Yep—same time last year is the baseline, but more layers on top of that. Day of week patterns, local events, weather, promotional calendar, even school schedules in family-heavy stores all factored in.
And yes on benefits thresholds—full-time usually kicks in around 32-40 hours depending on the company and state. Keeping part-timers just under that line is a deliberate scheduling strategy.
There’s also usually a fixed number of full-time benefit slots per store, so full-time status can become a carrot. Work hard, show loyalty, maybe you get the slot when it opens. It’s a retention tool dressed up as a reward.
Are there any thresholds around part time? I never understood why my job at Hot Topic never gave me more than 8 to 10 hours a week or so. When I wanted 12 or 15.
No universal minimum for part-time hours the way there’s a maximum before benefits kick in. Companies can legally schedule someone for 4 hours a week and call them employed. The floor is basically whatever the manager decides.
Specialty retail also runs on thin labor budgets so there’s just less to go around…sometimes they hire more bodies than hours to keep coverage flexible and everyone gets a small slice.
Personally I always tried to give people what they asked for. If someone wanted hours and I knew they were a hard worker, I found a way. But every manager is different.
I'd love to hear more about labor policy that would actually help people in low-wage occupations.
Considering things like ban-the-box policies and minimum wage, the effects of policy on labor can be unintuitive. My bias is to assume that most regulations and "protections" are harmful, but perhaps there are some policies that would help with this kind of fluid employment environment?
I’m most excited about things that make your life better regardless of where you work or if you work.
- cash transfers (why is so much of our poverty alleviation via income tax returns?)
- affordable / subsidized health insurance that doesn’t depend on your employer.
- double how much housing we have and make things like narrow apartments, triplexes, single room occupancies (which were mostly used by retirees and working poor even up until the 1980s before mostly banned). I feel safer knowing there’s a cheap cheap way to live if I someday can’t afford an entire apartment.
I’m still thinking though. There’s probably way more. We definitely have to protect the Pell grant. The extra cash it gives you if your community college is cheaper than the grant is such a gift.
Things we have to protect: free and reduced school lunches and SNAP
Thanks for flagging ban-the-box! I wasn’t familiar with it. It sounds great - though I do hope it doesn’t mean that people with records end up spending more time in rounds of interviews with people who will say no later. I think overall it sounds like it will help though!
Agree with all of this! I'd add that your pieces on regulations blocking low cost food options fit into this framework too.
I see ban-the-box policies as a cautionary tale actually! A well meaning policy that seems to have increased discrimination and made it harder for minorities to get employment.
Ah wait it did end up doing that?
The food ones I’m very excited about too!!
Yeah, it seems that employers who couldn't find out about someones record because of ban-the-box discriminated against people of color. Being able to do a background check lowered the risk of hiring.
Though to be clear this question isn't fully settled, different papers find different effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box#Impact
Whoa fascinating! Thanks for flagging this!
“Agan and Starr sent out 15,000 fictitious online job applications to companies in those areas with racially stereotypical names on the job applications. Prior to the implementation of Ban the Box laws in New Jersey and New York City, the gap in the callback rate between the job applications with stereotypically black names and stereotypically white names was 7 percent. After the implementation of Ban the Box laws, the racial gap in the callback rate increased to 45 percent”
This is also a good place to mention the unfortunate decisions years ago to fund Social Security (and more unfortunate still because it happened ater) Medicare with a tax on wages. And to tie health insurance (enterely before ACA and still preferentially) to employment. Both of those decisios make employers less likely to hire low wage workers and the later to hire into jobs that trigger requirements to "provide" health nsurance coverage.
Wait is this why no retail place would ever give good hours?They always capped us at like 8 or 12!
Partly I guess. Alhough I thoughit was more like 20 to trigger. It might have something to do with portfolio diverdification over absenteeism.
A big issue in policy circles is the idea that people at the lower end of the wage scale face effective marginal tax rates up to 100% in some cases due to benefit withdrawal on means test befits.
Especially in the case of single moms there are a lot of government benefits (healthcare, childcare, rent assistance, etc) that scale back or disappear as people earn more money at the low end.
There can also be a big marriage penalty since having two incomes often drives people above certain thresholds (Medicaid for instance). So a lot of people don’t get married.
Is this something that people think about at the lower end? The data makes it seem like it alters behavior, but I’ve never interviewed someone about it. People keep doing these jobs and try moving up the ladder even though as an outside observer it almost seems pointless (unless you can take the earnings under the table in cash).
Yes I’ve seen this. I’ve seen someone lament they can’t get a substantial job because they’d jeopardize SSI or Medicaid - and if they lost it, the new job wouldn’t make enough so they could afford the medical needs they have that led them to qualify. (In Texas, for the most part, single adults only qualify for Medicaid if they are both disabled AND low income.)
I’ve seen people say they only live together and aren’t married because of their spouse qualifying for Medicaid but only if they’re on their own yeah.
I kind of thought it was normal. People don’t often go into the reason why. It’s like too detailed or complicated to fully explain the context during friendly conversation (unless one person is really really curious.) I’ve mostly seen it around Medicaid and SSI.
Marriage penalties also apply to EITC. Economist Nada Eissa has done work on this: https://www.nber.org/people/nada_eissa?page=1&perPage=50
I wrote about her early work back in 2000: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/financial/001102tax-analysis-women.html
This is fascinating. The decision for women to work seems especially sensitive to tax policies! Love your quote about “it’s like a subsidize for married women to not work”
“Republicans don't want to admit that cutting taxes will lead more married women to get jobs, lest they split economic libertarians and social conservatives. So everyone stays mum.” - this is super interesting
I would say it is not just college educated leading the thinking but men in union style jobs. It is nearly impossible too get the political class off of their visions of past glory re manufacturing.
I remember when this economy started up here back in the '80s. I thought it was fortunate, there hadn't been so many jobs until all these retail joints opened up here. You couldn't BUY a job, if you had no specific experience. Now you could have three of them. And people did that, at least for a while.