The Economic Consequences of Homelessness in The US

Although the service sector has the highest rate of working poverty, a significant portion
of the working poor are blue-collar workers in the manufacturing, agriculture, and
construction industries.
Most manufacturing jobs used to offer generous wages and benefits, but manufacturing
job quality has declined over the years. Nowadays, many US manufacturing jobs are
located in right-to-work states, where it is nearly impossible for workers to form a union.
This means that
manufacturing employers are
able to pay lower wages and
offer fewer benefits than they
used to.
Demographic Factors
In her book, No Shame in My
Game, Katherine Newman
finds that "[t]he nation's
young, its single parents, the
poorly educated, and
minorities are more likely than
other workers to be poor"
(p. 42). These factors, in
addition to being part of a
large household, being part of
a single-earner household,
being female, and having a
part-time (instead of a fulltime)
job have been found to be important working poverty "risk factors." Immigrant
workers and self-employed workers are also more likely to be working poor than other
kinds of workers.
Economic Factors
There is a widespread assumption that economic growth leads to tighter labor markets
and higher wages. However, the evidence suggests that economic growth does not
always benefit each part of the population equally. For example, the 1980s was a period
of economic growth and prosperity in the United States, but most of the economic gains
were concentrated at the top of the income spectrum. This means that people near the
bottom of the labor market did not benefit from the economic gains of the 1980s. In fact,
many have argued that low-skilled workers experienced declining prosperity in the
1980s. Therefore, changing economic conditions do not have as large of an impact on
working poverty rates as one might expect.
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