Earn It Goal 8

Workers hold jobs that pay wages and offer benefits that support a stable family life.

Common Sense

• Many full-time workers earn wages too low to meet their families’ basic needs.
• In rural areas, many local jobs are either seasonal or part-time.
• Most of the fastest growing industries in rural areas—for example, tourism and hospitality or services – pay only the minimum wage.
• Benefits—especially health insurance and leave policies—contribute to family stability and flexibility by lowering the time, stress and dollar costs of family care, and making them more manageable and predictable.
• Fewer jobs in rural areas offer benefits – due to the preponderance of smaller businesses, seasonal and part-time jobs, and self-employment.
• Workers without health insurance are often one family health crisis away from job loss and/or bankruptcy.

Fast Facts

• 25% of rural workers 25 and older earn wages below the poverty threshold for a family of four – half of these are the sole or main family wage earner. REF
• On average, it costs about 16% less to live in a non-metropolitan area than a metropolitan area. However, non-metropolitan earnings are on average 25.5% lower than metropolitan earnings. (USDA ERS, Rural Employment at a Glance, 2006)
• Nearly one in four rural families lack health insurance—and almost two-thirds of these rural uninsured are from low-income families. (Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Health Insurance Coverage in Rural America, 2003)
• 83% of people earning $75,000 or more have jobs that offer health insurance; only 26% of those earning $25,000 or less do. (AECF, The High Cost of Being Poor,2004)
• In the typical U.S. state, only one in four jobs are considered “good jobs”—jobs that pay well and provide health and retirement benefits. (CEPR, Working Families and
  Economic Insecurity in the States, 2008)
• Almost 80% of low-wage workers do not have paid sick days. (National Partnership for Women and Families, Why Working Families Need Paid Sick Days)

Check out related Action Ideas and Alerts below! Or view other Earn It goals here.