The Public Cost of Low Wage Fast Food Jobs

U.C. Berkeley’s Labor Center published a report today on the public cost of low wage jobs in the fast food industry. With median wages for front-line fast food workers at $8.69 an hour, “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.” These public programs include earned income tax credits, publicly subsidized health insurance, income support and food stamps. The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast food industry totals $7 billion a year — $3.9 billion of which goes to spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), according to the report.

“It just doesn’t make sense that we prepare and cook food for people every day, but instead of being paid enough to feed our own families, many of us can’t afford three meals every day,” says Devonte Yates, a McDonald’s worker in Milwaukee who earns $7.25 an hour. “I don’t want to be on food stamps. I’d rather stand on my own two feet. McDonald’s should raise wages so we can afford decent food for ourselves.”

Not too long ago, families were able to turn to construction and manufacturing jobs to build a middle class life for themselves. My father, employed by the Ford Motor Company, and a few of my uncles, who worked in construction, were blue collar workers who labored in these kinds of jobs and provided for their families. Those jobs were decimated in the last decade, while, according to the National Employment Law Project, three out of every five jobs gained in the recovery after the financial crisis were in low-wage fast food, retail, and home health care fields. This is a significant shift — without a living wage for these workers, the public will be paying for it anyway.

Photo: Roger Blackwell

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