Not Getting by in America

Not Getting by in America

A journalist named Barbara Ehrenreich conducted a study on what it’s like to be a low-wage worker in the United States. To become more immersed in her research she worked low-wage jobs in order to understand workers better. She gave herself three rules to follow. “First, in her search for jobs, she cannot fall back on any skills derived from her education or usual work. Second, she had to take the highest-paying job that was offered to her and do her best to keep it. Third, she had to take the cheapest accommodations she could find, with an acceptable level of safety and privacy.” She went to three different states to perform her study. They are Florida, Maine, and Minnesota.
In Florida, she starts as a waitress making $2.43 an hour. After a while, she soon realizes that she needs another job but working two jobs is so demanding that she ends up quitting one. In Florida, she realized that having no health insurance causes high costs for health care when a person is sick. Also with no money people end up living in motels with ends up costing more in the end. The second place she went to was Maine. At first, she works as a housekeeper. This job is both physically and mentally demanding to the point where some of the women she worked with took pain medication. Something she learned in Maine is that there is very little assistance for the poor and when she asked for help she was treated rudely. The last place she goes to is Minnesota. She had a lot of difficulties finding shelter causing her to move into a hotel. In Minnesota, she works at Walmart for $7 an hour. She soon comes to realize that the people working there are working too hard for so little money. 
It was interesting to me how hard she had to work just to make a little bit of money. People working in low-wage jobs are working harder than I ever thought they were. Some jobs, like housekeeping are even very physically and mentally demanding that she found it very hard to continue to work at. Before reading this article I didn’t know how hard low-wage workers had it. Barely making any money makes it very tough to get by, especially if you have other factors influencing how you spend your money like sickness. Low wage workers need to be earning more than they are because they are also important members of society. 

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