The Text:<\/strong> CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. \u2014 At 7 in the morning, they are already lined up \u2014 poultry plant workers, housekeepers, discount store clerks \u2014 to ask for help paying their heating bills or feeding their families.<\/p>\nAnd once Metropolitan Ministries opens at 8 a.m., these workers fill the charity\u2019s 40 chairs, with a bawling infant adding to the commotion. From pockets and handbags they pull out utility bills or rent statements and hand them over to caseworkers, who often write checks \u2014 $80, $110, $150 \u2014 to patch over gaps in meeting this month\u2019s expenses or filling the gas tank to get to work.<\/p>\n
Just off her 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift, Erika McCurdy needed help last month with her electricity and heating bill, which jumped to $280 in January from the usual $120 \u2014 a result of one of the coldest winters in memory. A nurse\u2019s aide at an assisted living facility, Ms. McCurdy said there were many weeks when she couldn\u2019t make ends meet raising her 19-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just no way, making $9 an hour as a single parent with two children, that I can live without assistance,\u201d said Ms. McCurdy, 40, a strong-voiced, solidly built Chattanooga native.<\/p>\n
She was so financially stretched, she said, that she and her daughter often sneaked into her son\u2019s high school football games free during halftime because she couldn\u2019t afford the $6 tickets. (She proudly noted that her son, Charles, had made the All State football team.) As for her daughter Jer\u2019Maya, who mimics Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s every move on her mother\u2019s iPhone, Ms. McCurdy said, \u201cShe\u2019d love to take ballet and piano lessons, but there\u2019s no way I can afford that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having worked as a nurse\u2019s aide for 15 years, Ms. McCurdy has been among the nearly 25 million workers in the United States who make less than $10.10 an hour \u2014 the amount to which President Obama supports increasing the minimum wage. Of those workers, 3.5 million make the $7.25 federal minimum wage or less.<\/p>\n
And like many of them, Ms. McCurdy hasn\u2019t been able to rely on steady full-time hours \u2014 she has often been assigned just 20 hours a week. Even if she worked full time year-round, her $9 hourly wage would put her below the poverty threshold of $19,530 for a family of three.<\/p>\n
Climbing above the poverty line has become more daunting in recent years, as the composition of the nation\u2019s low-wage work force has been transformed by the Great Recession, shifting demographics and other factors. More than half of those who make $9 or less an hour are 25 or older, while the proportion who are teenagers has declined to just 17 percent from 28 percent in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, according to Janelle Jones and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy Research.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s low-wage workers are also more educated, with 41 percent having at least some college, up from 29 percent in 2000. \u201cMinimum-wage and low-wage workers are older and more educated than 10 or 20 years ago, yet they\u2019re making wages below where they were 10 or 20 years ago after inflation,\u201d said Mr. Schmitt, senior economist at the research center. \u201cIf you look back several decades, workers near the minimum wage were more likely to be teenagers \u2014 that\u2019s the stereotype people had. It\u2019s definitely not accurate anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Chattanooga, the prevalence of low-wage jobs has contributed to the high poverty rate: 27 percent of the city\u2019s residents live below the poverty line, compared with 15 percent nationwide. Women head about two-thirds of the city\u2019s poor households, and 42 percent of its children are poor, nearly double the rate statewide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe face of poverty in this community is women, especially women of color,\u201d said Valerie L. Radu, a professor of social work at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.<\/p>\n
This city was not always a magnet for low-wage jobs. For much of the last century, the city, which hugs the Tennessee River, was a manufacturing hub with dozens of apparel factories, textile mills and metal foundries.<\/p>\n
During the last quarter of the 20th century, almost all the factories and foundries were shuttered, and with them disappeared thousands of manufacturing jobs that had once lifted workers, even ones without high school degrees, into the middle class or to the cusp of it. In their place have come thousands of service-sector jobs: at the aquarium and Imax theater built to lure tourists and at hotels, nursing homes, big-box stores, brew pubs, fast-food restaurants, beauty salons and hospitals.<\/p>\n
Discount stores dot the landscape, including a Family Dollar downtown near the upscale Bluewater Grille, reflecting how much American cities have experienced a hollowing-out of the middle class.<\/p>\n
\u201cChattanooga has a twofold problem: the low level of educational attainment and the traditional jobs that these people move into have largely disappeared,\u201d said Matthew N. Murray, an economist at the University of Tennessee. Just 23 percent of Tennessee adults have a bachelor\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n
JeraLee Kincaid, 23, is an $8.50-an-hour cashier who works at the checkout booth at a parking garage next to the Marriott Courtyard hotel downtown. A solid student in high school, Ms. Kincaid, who lives with her mother, planned to study computer programming in college, but instead her family decided that she needed to help pay the medical bills of a 5-year-old niece who has leukemia.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe can\u2019t eat, talk or walk by herself,\u201d said Ms. Kincaid. She says she feels stuck, but also grateful that her boss is trying to help find her a scholarship to attend college.<\/p>\n
When Volkswagen opened a $1 billion assembly plant in 2011, 80,000 people applied for 2,000 jobs paying an average of $19.50 an hour. Many low-wage workers, like Ms. McCurdy \u2014 a high school dropout who later obtained her high school equivalency diploma \u2014 would have loved to work there, but they faced difficulty mastering the math tests given for jobs that involve advanced machinery.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that more individuals have to get some kind of higher education degree or certificate to have a chance in this world,\u201d said Chattanooga\u2019s mayor, Andy Berke. \u201cWe don\u2019t want the South to be a place where businesses go to find low-wage, low-education jobs. That\u2019s a long-term problem that midsized cities in the South face.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here as well as elsewhere, a college degree cannot guarantee a good job.<\/p>\n
Landon Howard graduated from the University of Tennessee campus here four years ago with a bachelor\u2019s degree in social work, but has been unable to find a job in that field. Instead he is a prep cook at the trendy Tupelo Honey Cafe. Often scheduled for just 15 to 20 hours a week at $9.50 an hour, he usually takes home less than $200 a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had to move back in with my parents,\u201d Mr. Howard said. His most urgent concern is his lack of dental insurance. \u201cOne of my teeth is cracked,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a big gaping hole. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. McCurdy, as a parent in a modest income bracket, would not usually be eligible for the state\u2019s Medicaid program, although her children would, but she was accepted because of a heart condition requiring costly medications.<\/p>\n
Her family has had to make many sacrifices since she was laid off in 2012 from her job as a full-time nurse\u2019s assistant in the emergency room of Memorial Hospital.<\/p>\n
Her fall to $9 an hour at the assisted living facility from $13.75 at the hospital forced her to give up a 2,000-square-foot home in Harrison, a local suburb, \u201cwhich is beautiful, and you have better schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good life,\u201d she added. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to worry about violence or anyone breaking in.\u201d<\/p>\n
After being laid off, \u201cI realized I couldn\u2019t afford to stay in a house where the rent was $625 a month,\u201d she said. So she found a $400-a-month, 1,100-square foot house in Brainerd, known for its gangs and violence. \u201cI stay in at night,\u201d she said. \u201cI put bars on the windows.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new house has two modest bedrooms, a largely unfurnished living room, a bathroom and a small shotgun kitchen \u201cwhere I got to move the table when my son gets up from dinner,\u201d she said. \u201cImagine being in a two-bedroom place with a 6-2, 280-pound boy and a little girl. Me and my little girl share a room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continue reading the main story
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\nThey also share a bed, but Jer\u2019Maya keeps her dolls, books and clothes in Charles\u2019s room, among his footballs and athletic gear. Ms. McCurdy receives $400 a month in food stamps. Without it, she said, \u201cwe wouldn\u2019t be eating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Ms. McCurdy worries about her children\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a son that\u2019s graduating in May,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s looking at college. My heart is pounding 99 miles per hour. If he goes on full scholarship, I\u2019ll still need to support him \u2014 how to pay his cellphone bill, how to pay for transportation and food during vacations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her February utility bill just arrived and it stunned her: $320. She may again turn to Metropolitan Ministries for help, although she says she hopes the $3,000 or so she expects to receive from the earned-income tax credit will help her pay that bill \u2014 and also buy a new living room couch.<\/p>\n
Rebecca Whelchel says she has seen big changes in the clientele since she became the executive director of Metropolitan Ministries eight years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt used to be that folks came in with a single issue \u2014 it was like, \u2018I have to buy a new tire because my tire blew out,\u2019 or, \u2018I\u2019m short on my electrical bill,\u2019 \u201d Ms. Whelchel said. \u201cNow they come in with a rubber band around a bunch of bills and problems. Everything is wrong. Everything is tangled with everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
At age 34, Nick Mason earns $9 an hour as an assistant manager for a Domino\u2019s, overseeing a crew of six. \u201cI don\u2019t think $9 is fair \u2014 I\u2019ve been working in the pizza business for 19 years, since I was 15,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He attended the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, studying to become a registered nurse, but he dropped out as a sophomore when his marriage fell apart. He returned to work full time, and he and his children moved in with his parents in the suburb of Hixson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wish we could have our home, but I can\u2019t afford to,\u201d said Mr. Mason, father of 7-year-old Halle and 5-year-old Eli. \u201cThat\u2019s what the kids keep asking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had to sacrifice a lot of things,\u201d he continued. \u201cI\u2019d love nothing more than to give them what they deserve. As a single father, it\u2019s impossible. I put my kids in karate about a year ago. They loved it, but I got to the point where it was a choice between paying for a cellphone or karate, and as a manager, I need a cellphone for people to keep in touch with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Mason has heard the criticisms: Stop complaining about your pay; just go back to school and that way you\u2019ll find a better-paying job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to go back to school,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy for people to say that because they haven\u2019t been in my shoes. I\u2019m already busy every minute of the day. I already don\u2019t get to see my kids enough. I doubt I\u2019ll be able to afford school, and I don\u2019t know where I would find the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
His big hope is to be promoted to run a Domino\u2019s, which might mean earning $15 an hour.<\/p>\n
Ms. McCurdy, who applied for two dozen jobs this winter, delivered good news with a big smile. She was offered a job as a full-time nurse\u2019s aide on the transition medical floor at Erlanger Health System, a hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re paying me $10.64,\u201d she said, an improvement over the $9 an hour she had been earning. \u201cThat gives me a little room to breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: Low-Wage Workers Are Finding Poverty Harder to Escape by Steven Greenhouse in The New York Times. The Text: CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. \u2014 At 7 in the morning, they are already lined up \u2014 poultry plant workers, housekeepers, discount store clerks \u2014 to ask for help paying their heating bills or feeding their families. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n