Women are finally earning almost as much as men. It’s been 40 years since the Equal Rights Amendment failed in Congress, but today, the Pew Research Center finds, Millennial women aged 25-34 are earning 93 cents to the male dollar. (If you’re counting everyone, the wage gap is still stuck at 84 cents to the dollar, however.)
This is great news, although there’s still a lot more work to do on parity. As Pew reports, the gap gets wider with age. ”Recent cohorts of young women have fallen further behind their same-aged male counterparts as they have aged and dealt with the responsibilities of parenthood and family.” In other words, as women begin having children, they find themselves taking time off because it’s so hard to balance being a mother and having a career. And the time off puts a ding in the pay raises.
While women have made progress, another story about working this week caught my eye —- a public media series on the working poor. The third installment was about Bridget, a 30-year-old in Cleveland who is living in her parents’ basement. Bridget, who has a BA in English, is back in school after a stint in law school (and $25,000 in school loan debt), and is working part-time in a work-study position. She’s not eligible for financial aid, she says, and she was fired from a job in a call center and unable to collect unemployment. She applied for food stamps and was eligible for $15 a month. She’s living on $300 a month. “All my money goes to health insurance and my cell phone, so I have no money to give anyone for bills or rent, or anything.”
“It’s surprisingly hard to find part-time work or low-wage work when you have a degree,” she says. “I applied at McDonalds, I applied at Walgreens…I applied at all these different minimum wage jobs, and they would laugh at me. `You have a bachelor’s degree, why are you here? You’re just going to quit!’
Luckily, her parents had a basement. Not everyone is as lucky. The working poor in this country are increasingly young adults. According to number crunching by the Economic Policy Institute, the typical person working minimum wage, for example, is a woman in her early 30s, works full-time, with a family to support. Minimum wage is not enough to lift someone above the poverty line, even working full-time.
Perhaps Bridget should become a tutor to the rich. As a recent CNBC segment reported, the wealthy spare nothing to ensure their children get into the right schools. One tutor earns six figures making sure his clients’ children pass the tests. Another family paid a tutor $1250.00 per hour. The most recent job opening is in Singapore and comes with an apartment, a driver, and a personal assistant.
In other words, as people like Bridget and millions of others in the disappearing middle class struggle to pay their college loans and earn enough for their own one-bedroom, the 1% are paying six figures to ensure their kids get into Stanford. Yeah, that’s the American way. The arms race is a live and well.
