Low-wage workers are more diverse than you think

23 July 2014

The perfect cup of coffeeIn his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to “give American a raise” by increasing the federal minimum wage. For the second year in a row he argued “that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty”. Even with the presidential priority of raising the Federal minimum wage, the 2014 House bill was voted down. In spite of this, many states and cities have opted to raise the basic hourly wage independent of the federal government.

Raising the minimum wage will impact employers and employees alike, and through them the larger society. While fewer than three percent of US workers* earn the minimum wage (or less), 18 percent earn less than $10.10/hour (the amount proposed by the President).  Understanding how an increased minimum wage will affect individuals first requires examining common arguments about low-wage workers.

Low-wage workers are students.

Some argue that an increase in the minimum wage would have the greatest impact on students –both high school and college—whose after-school employment represents pocket money or a way of defraying college tuition even as they continue to rely on their parents’ assistance as they finish school. It is true that students are disproportionately represented among low-wage workers, yet they account for only one in five workers earning less than $10.10/hour.

Low-wage workers are young adults at the beginning of their work history.

Young adults, early in their careers, will benefit from increased experience, not government intervention, to raise their wages, according to this argument. Yet when students and young adults (18-25) in the work force are taken together, they represent only roughly half of all low-wage workers.  The other one-half is not comprised of young adults who have many more years in the workforce to increase their experience (and presumably their wages).

Young Workers

Low-wage workers are parents living in poverty.

Low-wage parents, doing their best to support their families, make a compelling case for raising the minimum wage. President Obama prefaced his call for increasing the minimum wage by saying “no one who works full time should ever have to raise a family in poverty.” And it is true that low-wages may be particularly difficult for parents to shake as they juggle work and family responsibilities.

However, this can be misleading: only about one in four low-wage workers is a parent living with young or school-aged children (although many parents not living with their children continue to bear financial responsibilities to them). Furthermore, only half of low-wage parents live in or near poverty.

Most low-wage parents have help paying the bills from other workers living in their household. For parents with shared financial responsibility, the median household income is roughly $51,000. The low wages of these parents is crucial to the financial health of their families even when other family members earn more. For the two out of five parents who are the only worker in the home, their median household income is around $20,000.

Parents

Almost 20 percent of all hourly and salaried workers earn less that $10.10 per hour. While they have low wages in common, their lives and financial situations are so diverse that accurate predictions about  universal impact of raising the minimum wage are hard to come by. For some workers, an increase may be a passing benefit as they work their way through high school or college.  For some adults, an increase provides additional—but perhaps not essential—funds earned to supplement household income.  However, for at least one-half of all low-wage workers, their earnings are the primary income for their household, or are supplemented only by other low-wage earnings. The demographic characteristics of low-wage workers demonstrate that any decision to raise the minimum wage will impact more than parents, students, and young adults, and will likely provide a more secure financial footing for a sizeable minority of Americans.

For more information about low-wage workers, check out the Census Brief series: Low-Wage Employment.

Also, check out our other Census Briefs on Virginia’s Immigrants, Snap in Virginia, and Aging and Migration in Virginia.

* Based on calculations using the Minnesota Population Center’s IPUMS data, Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group Microdata, March 2013. Analysis done on all employed, working individuals. Following the Bureau of Labor Statistics, these numbers exclude self-employed and agricultural workers. All of the analysis of individual income is based on workers’ earned income, and does not take into account income from sources outside of the labor market, such as welfare or disability benefits or retirement income.

Virginia is getting older

15 July 2014

Like many people, I’ve been inclined to explain Virginia’s decades of explosive population growth in terms of migration and the Federal government’s expansion in Northern Virginia.  While that’s certainly part of the equation, “natural increase” has actually driven most of the growth, just as it has across the country.  Natural increase simply means more people are born than die in a year.  Even in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, natural increase is the largest generator of population growth.  But “natural increase” does not mean that we are having lots and lots of babies.  In fact, it has much more to do with the fact that we had a lot of babies a while back and since then people started living a lot longer.

You hear, on this blog and elsewhere, about the “aging population,” but I wanted to show exactly what that means.  Here’s the one gif you need to see to understand population growth in Virginia:

1980

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“Seeing” Virginia’s Workforce

10 July 2014

FlowingData_ScreenShot_Virginia_MedIncWhen it comes to interactive data visualizations, I am a junky. I don’t mean the dime-a-dozen country maps showing the favorite baby name/band/movie/current fad for each state. I mean the kind that present information in a way that surprises me, even when I am relatively familiar with the data.

The Demographics Research Group has created some really illuminating data visualizations highlighting residential segregation by race, educational division in Washington, D.C., and this older one on electoral changes in Virginia.

Today I spent quite a bit of time exploring this interactive chart of Jobs by State and Salary, created by Dr. Nathan Yau over at FlowingData. In this chart, Yau shows the number of people employed and the median income for all jobs in a state. The top image shows the occupations in Virginia with a median annual salary of roughly $33,000 or more highlighted in green.

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Average Density of Virginia’s Metro Areas

1 July 2014

Recently, I’ve been comparing a number of traits of metropolitan areas based on distance from the core.  Here I’m looking at the average densities of each metro area as you travel outwards from the center, calculated using census blocks and 2010 short-form census data.  I’ve graphed them in groups of three.  Cities with a strong core will have high densities on the left (near the center) that fall off as you travel outwards.  Cities whose densities fall off quickly on the right have clearer edges, while those that taper off slowly are more spread out.  Click on the graphs to view them full screen.

First are the three major metro areas.  Note that the Northern VA graph includes only Virginia census blocks, not the rest of the DC area.  Northern VA has the largest population by far, with fairly high densities even several miles into the suburbs.  Richmond has the smoothest curve.  I used downtown Norfolk as the core for Hampton Roads, but the area’s polycentricity is obvious.

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Virginia’s Regions: Northern Virginia is Different

27 June 2014

This week, the Demographics Research Group updated its profile of Virginia’s regions. The eight regions of the Commonwealth were identified by the Demographics Research Group based on proximity, geography, demographic characteristics and shared socioeconomic conditions. While there are many shared characteristics across Virginia’s regions, our profile shows that a number of differences exist as well.

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Northern Virginia stands out the most among Virginia’s regions, but this is not a new trend as Charles Grymes notes on Virginia Places:

“Northern Virginia has been “different” ever since Lord Fairfax established a land office issuing Northern Neck deeds independently from the colonial government in Williamsburg” Continue reading →

What, exactly, do Americans do all day?

26 June 2014

Hanging a clock-editedLast week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released results from the 2013 American Time Use Survey. This survey, administered every year for the last decade, asks respondents–selected from people who have recently completed the Current Population Survey–to keep a diary of how they spent their time for a full 24 hour period. These data allow us to understand something about the “average” day not only for the population overall, but also for various subgroups, such as the unemployed or elderly. As you read, consider: How helpful is information about the “average” respondent?

While there is a fair amount of data to mine, let’s start at the highest level, by looking at time use on an “average” weekday across all respondents:ATUS_piechartPerhaps most notable is the sheer amount of sleep people seem to be getting: apparently, a healthy 8.5 hours a night. Not bad!

…however. As detailed over at Wonkblog, it turns out that “sleeping” is what happens between getting into bed and getting out of bed, and also takes into account naps. This way of calculating sleep doesn’t differentiate between deep slumber and “dozing off to Netflix” (I know I’m not the only one).  Similarly, things like “reading in bed” could feasibly occur during these otherwise allocated sleep hours.

And though 99.9 percent of all respondents reported that they slept at some point in the previous 24 hours, the time reported for other activities is averaged across everyone in the survey, whether they did or did not report them in their time-use “diary”. This is where we need to pay attention to what we mean by “average”. Continue reading →

The Line that Divides DC

17 June 2014

No it’s not a party line.  It’s an almost perfectly straight line running north-south along 16th Street, passing through the White House, and then continuing along the Potomac River to the south.  It divides two very different sides of the DC area.

These graphs are a cross-section of the DC area that looks at how the city changes as you travel from the center to the periphery.  I’ve split the graphs into two sides based on the east-west dividing line.  You’ll notice the first one or two miles to the east are much like their western counterparts (this is essentially the area around Capitol Hill and the National Mall).  After that, the two sides diverge pretty dramatically.DCEW Continue reading →

What’s Driving the Rise in High School Graduation Rates?

9 June 2014

Much of the news that circulates regarding the state of education is not positive, but one trend that remains underreported is the significant rise in public high school graduation rates during the past decade. By the end of this month, around 85,000 high school seniors are expected to have graduated from Virginia’s public schools.That is nearly 8,000 more than would have been expected to graduate just a few years ago.
Virginia High School Graduation Rate Continue reading →