Seven out of the top 10 occupations in Ohio are now low-wage jobs, according to a recently released report.
In 2000, only four out of the top 10 were low-wage jobs, says the analysis, based on Labor Department and other government data, done by the left-leaning Policy Matters Ohio.
“You can’t look at the most common occupations and then look at the changes and say everything is OK in terms of what people are making,” said Hannah Halbert, the nonprofit’s lead workforce researcher, who authored the report. “People aren’t getting paid enough.
“Seven of the 10 largest occupational categories paid so little in 2016 that a family of three would struggle,” she said. “They would qualify for such things as food assistance.”
Halbert ranked the top 10 occupations in both 2000 and 2016 based on how far their annual median earnings were above the poverty rate. In 2016, the poverty rate for a family of three was $20,160. Jobs were deemed to be at least moderate paying if median earnings were at least 130 percent above poverty. That meant that a worker would have had to have made at least $26,125 a year.
In 2016, these jobs on the top 10 list had median earnings that were less than 130 percent of poverty: food preparation and serving worker, which included fast-food workers; retail salesperson, cashier, laborer and freight, stock and material movers; waiters and waitresses, janitors and cleaners and stock clerks and order fillers.
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