Work- and Employment-Related Hardships
For people living in poverty, work and employment experiences have the following characteristics:
Their work has no or very little positive impact on their life trajectories because of the extreme difficulty of building a career. Most of the time, because of low wages and unfair employment practices, work is not perceived as a way to a better situation.
Their work gives them no or very little access to social or professional networks that can open opportunities for advancement.
They need to hold multiple (sometimes part-time) jobs to earn enough money to sustain themselves or a family.
The jobs that people living in poverty can get often fail to provide benefits (for example, health care and sick days), while at the same time these jobs put their health in danger. These types of employment (often menial and manual labor) and underemployment can lead to anxiety and stress, self-doubt about what they can accomplish, and possibly eruptions of violence because the jobs don’t let them feel useful to themselves, their families, or their communities.
It is hard to find a job and to keep a job. The skills that are learned from experience by people living in poverty are not valued or considered marketable. In the economic sphere, people in poverty are considered and treated as disposable, and this creates uncertainty and instability in their lives.
On Native American reservations as well as in other rural and urban areas, a majority of employers do not offer full-time employment with health care and other benefits, so most people need two or more jobs to survive. This creates a self-defeating cycle: people arrive at their second or third job already exhausted, leading them to make mistakes that can hurt them or other people or cost them their job. They have no time to rest, to spend with family, or to pursue their own interests or personal development.
People living in poverty also do the most dangerous jobs — working on pipelines, gas lines, coal mines, and assembly lines — and accept low-paying jobs that nobody else wants to do. They risk their health working with chemicals and impose undue wear and tear on their bodies, making them seem much older than they really are, from a lifetime of doing manual labor or standing all day at work. When job applicants write their address on an application form, prospective employers may stereotype them as lazy, unreliable, or untrustworthy, and refuse to hire them because of where they live.
“You can only get the jobs that lie at the bottom of society.”
The types of employment available to them do not pay a living wage. The menial, dead-end jobs they can find do not allow them to develop professional skills and networking connections. This vicious cycle not only limits their own personal growth, but also has generational effects: they have no opportunity to build the same social capital or networks available to other people, who pass them on to their children.
The stress and hardship of always being underemployed or unemployed — constant fear of not making enough money to provide for a family, or anxiety about being laid off — can end up tearing a family apart. The pressure of receiving low wages and having to work long hours can lead some people to use drugs and alcohol, or even resort to domestic violence. These individual hardships create challenges that can affect an entire community.
People in poverty want to take “the right path” of traditional employment, but when “the system” locks you out, some people resort to “the hustle” — taking odd jobs that pay “under the table,” or “off the books,” or participating in the “underground economy” (undeclared income from babysitting, cooking, etc.) — out of necessity or frustration. Others resort to what seem like more lucrative, but far more dangerous, options including drug dealing and sex work. But this also is a “Catch-22” situation. Participants in these illegal activities can end up with a criminal record that will prevent them from obtaining even the low paying, dead-end, and sometimes dangerous jobs they are trying to compensate for in the first place; and this continues a vicious circle. They have the feeling that there is no way out.
Work- and employment-related hardships can affect everyone in poverty, but some groups feel these hardships more than others based on who they are.
For many women in poverty, and especially women of color in poverty, a lifetime of low wages and a gender pay gap make it impossible for them to retire. Most of the employment options for single mothers consist of low-wage jobs during the hours their children are in school (so-called “mother’s hours”) They face the additional stress of juggling the role of sole provider on a low wage while also providing nurturing care — if they take a day off work to care for a sick child, they risk losing the job that enables them to support that child.
Women in poverty with low-wage jobs are more susceptible to sexual harassment at work. They know they do not have the skills that would allow them to leave their job and find another one; and the perpetrators know this too.
People with immigration status problems also experience work and employment hardships and can often get only “the jobs (that) lie at the bottom of society.”