Fast Food Jobs Cost America $7 Billion A Year? Does McDonald’s Make America Poor [View all]
October 15, 2013 12:39 pm EDT
Filed under “data to hard to obtain and analyze” are various estimates for what poverty or low wages cost the U.S. economy. Among the issues this kind of analysis creates are that increased wages can cut the margins of those companies that give them. Lower profits often mean jobs cuts, or reduced capital spending. If people make more, do the number of people who make more drop?
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have come up with a proprietary calculation of the impact of a large number of people being paid at or around the minimum wage. In a paper entitled “Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in the Fast Food Industry”, the authors conclude:
More than half (52 percent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.
The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly $7 billion per year.
More: http://247wallst.com/retail/2013/10/15/fast-food-jobs-cost-america-7-billion-a-year-does-mcdonalds-make-america-poor/?mod=marketwatch
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