Hi, good morning, Inequality Insights readers; it’s Wendy Fry. About 5.6 million people – or one out of every three California workers – are paid a low wage, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s newly updated Low Wage Work Data Explorer. Low-wage work is defined by the Berkeley researchers as jobs that pay less than two-thirds of the median full-time wage in California. For 2022, the latest data available, those low-wage jobs paid less than $19.69 per hour. The top jobs at this pay rate are agricultural workers, cashiers, personal care aides, retail salespersons, and cooks.
“I think the big takeaway is that there’s still a lot of work to be done to make sure that the quality of these jobs improves, including the wage,” said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and a principal researcher on the project.
Some of the researchers’ most surprising findings are that low-wage workers are more educated now than they were 20 years ago and that the share of the low-paid workforce 55 years or older in California doubled between 2000 and 2022. The data shows that almost one in three workers with an associate degree and one in six with a bachelor’s or advanced degree is paid a low wage. Foreign-born workers are slightly more likely to be paid a low wage – 38.5% of all foreign-born workers are paid low wages compared to 33.6% of U.S.-born workers.
The worker data shows huge divides between racial groups. For example, 48.7% of all Hispanic workers in California are paid low wages, compared to 23.9% for non-Hispanic white workers. And 37.2% of all Black workers in California receive low wages, the latest figures show. The data explorer gives a more nuanced picture of wage divisions among Asian American workers, showing that while 16% of workers from South Asia are paid a low wage, 32.7% of workers from Southeast Asia are in the same situation.
It’s not all bad news. Workers at the very bottom have experienced real wage growth since 2015, mainly because of the state’s minimum wage increases and tight labor markets after the pandemic, according to the data. The lowest-paid 10 percent of workers saw their median wages increase by about 25%, the data shows. Those gains are not enough to offset the rising costs of living in California, said Lopezlira.
“Even though there’s been some wage gains at the bottom, the reality is that low-wage workers are still not earning a living wage,” said Lopezlira.
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Use it or lose it. California has missed out on hundreds of millions of federal dollars meant to feed hungry kids, CalMatters’ Denise Amos writes. Communication lapses and inconsistent outreach mean some needy families in California don’t receive the federal money earmarked for them. State figures show California sent out nearly $11 billion worth of EBT cards, but only $9.5 billion was spent.
Universal basic income. For the last couple of years, the tech community has been testing out the idea of guaranteed basic income by providing low-income residents with no-strings-attached payments of $500 or $1,000 a month, the New York Times reported. On Monday, results from an Unconditional Income Study measuring the impacts will be released.
Border order. According to a White House official, illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have decreased by 50% nationwide since President Biden’s June 4 order greatly restricting asylum claims. For California, the latest data shows a drop of approximately 20% between May and June 2024.
LGBTQ+ curriculum. California education officials are investigating the Cajon Valley Union School District in the San Diego area for leaving out instruction about LGBTQ+ and gender topics from its sexual health curriculum. The curriculum doesn’t address LGBTQ+ people or issues at all, in violation of state law, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Eviction lawyers. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted this week to create a plan to start providing residents facing eviction with free attorneys, the LAist reports. The “Right to Counsel” program would be the first of its kind in Southern California.
Prison phone calls. The Federal Communications Commission is set “to end exorbitant phone and video call rates that have burdened incarcerated people and their families for decades,” according to a news release. In 2022, California passed a law making phone calls free for the approximately 90,000 people incarcerated in the state prison system.
Missing people. California tribes will receive almost $20 million in grants to address the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Person crisis, the Sacramento Bee reported. There are more than 150 documented Missing and Murdered Indigenous Person cases in California, which is the fifth most cases in the country, according to the Sovereign Bodies Institute.
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Thanks,
Wendy Fry and the California Divide team