Women and minorities least likely to earn 'living wage' in Oregon, new report says

Seattle Wage March.jpg

Hundreds of people marched in Seattle earlier this year to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. A new report released by The Alliance for a Just Society, a a Seattle advocacy group, says large numbers of full-time workers in 10 states, including Oregon, don't earn enough to support themselves or their families

(AP Photo/Joshua Trujillo)

By several measures, large swaths of full-time workers in Oregon don't earn enough to support themselves or a family, according to a new study released today.

"Equity in the Balance," a report by the Alliance for a Just Society, was released Tuesday, Nov. 18, by The Main Street Alliance of Oregon, an affiliate of the Seattle-based alliance.

The report, coming at the start of the holiday season, highlights the issue of pay equity, using a wage of $15 per hour as a basis for a more detailed analysis of conditions in 10 states, including Oregon, and New York City.

Among the key findings for all 10 states and New York City:

-- Less than two-third of all full-time workers earn a living wage for a single adult, and less than one-third earn enough for a single adult with two children, to make ends meet.

-- People of color were less likely than all workers to earn a living wage.

-- Women were less likely to earn a living wage than male workers.

'Equity in the Balance' methodology

The

's analysis of who earns a living wage at the state level relies on two primary sources of data: the Census Bureau's

American Community Survey 2013

’s one-year Public Use Microdata Sample estimates (released October 2014); and the living wage figures calculated in

as part of the alliance’s 2014 Job Gap Economic Prosperity Series (released August 2014).

The findings represent the percentage of full-time workers who are 16 and older who reported earnings in 2013 at or above calculated living wage levels among five household types. The total sample analyzed was about 1 million U.S. workers, including 12,309 in Oregon.

The living wage levels are calculated individually for each of the 10 states included in the report and New York City.

This is the second in a series of four scheduled Job Gap reports prepared by the alliance on living wage issues. More information on the study:

.

In Oregon, less than half of all workers categorized in four of five household types earn a living wage, defined in the report as "one that allows families to meet their basic needs, without public assistance, and that provides them some ability to deal with emergencies and plan ahead."

The report found that a majority of single adult full-time workers – 57 percent – earn more than $15.96 per hour, the alliance's calculation of a living wage for that group.

For all other workers, the percentage declines sharply:

  • 36 percent of single adults with a school-age child (6 to 8 years old) earn a living wage of $23.74.
  • 24 percent of single adults with a toddler and a school-age child earn a living wage of $30.75.
  • 23 percent of two-adult households, with one person working, with a toddler and a school-age child earn a living wage of $31.14.
  • 43 percent of two-adult households, with both persons working, with a toddler and school-age child earn a living wage of $20.72.

Across the board in every category, people of color earn less than whites, women earn less than men, and non-citizens earn less than U.S. citizens, the report found.

The greatest disparities were among Latinos, with just 6 percent of two-parent households with one worker and two children, and 6 percent of single-parent households with two children earning a living wage.

Stephen Michael, state director of The Main Street Alliance of Oregon, a network of more than 2,500 small businesses across the state, said the primary takeaway from the report is that "there's certainly a lot of work to be done."

"There are a lot of people in Oregon and across the country who are working full-time and still not earning enough to get by," he said. "When we raise the wages of the lowest-paid people, (we're helping) the ones who are paying the highest proportion of their income. So when they're earning more, they're able to spend more in the community and that's money in our customers' pockets."

Though he stopped short of calling for a specific minimum wage, Michael said he hoped Oregon lawmakers and the public at large would take the report's findings to heart.

"It's important for us to have a real honest conversation as a community about these issues, about inequities in pay based on race, gender, ethnicity and citizenship," he said. "The public needs to look at and fix a lot of these injustices.

"For hundreds of years, we've seen policies and practices that have perpetuated these low wages. That practice of keeping artificially low wages amounts to economic racism. There's just no way around that."

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