American life is improving for the lowest paid

While that's true, it' mostly because its a bad article rather than the headline being wrong. Of that 4.1% gain over 40 years, 0.9% were in the the past year. America is seeing an economic boom go on longer than expected and low unemployment is allowing people who left the labor market to re-enter and _slowly_ pushing wages up.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm

It's popular to claim that wages have gone nowhere for ~40 years, it's never supported by the actual data. The premise requires that one ignores the cost of health coverage in the US that is commonly paid for or heavily subsidized by an employer (the employee would have to pay far higher taxes for that otherwise, given the per capita healthcare cost in the US is now ~$11,000 -- $33,000 for a family of three). It ignores pretty much every benefit that employees receive today, that did not exist in the early 1970s, including 401k matching.

If companies weren't paying for healthcare benefits, the employees would see their taxes skyrocket. That's a dramatic, obvious, direct wage benefit. In socialized systems such as are common in Europe, the companies do not pay nearly so much for healthcare coverage, instead individuals pay far higher personal taxes, while the average corporate income tax rate is low.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-15/wage-s...

what really puts the cherry on top is that a market crash is expected soon, with much less ability to cushion it than last time. guess what market crashes due to median wages? very bad things! and the people who own lots of capital will see their fortunes recover soon enough as everyone else is cleaned out. so things look very tentatively positive now and will be very bleak in a couple years.

The poor in America often have climate controlled environments, cell phones, access to employment opportunities, access to charitable organizations and more. With rising wages, their fortunes are increasing.

It's not easy or desirable to be poor. But if you have to be poor, being American in 2019 is a pretty good spot.

If you work N hours, you get paid for N hours.

That’s why getting one week of paid leave annually was described as rare.

Yes, and even that is a rarity for wage workers.

>Is there any other form of paid off time?

Nope. Most hourly workers are lucky to get a few unpaid sick days. Have an accident, or get sick and need to spend a couple weeks in the hospital? Now you're unemployed and bankrupt.

As of March 2017 ~23% of private industry workers have no paid time off

I'm not sure they exist, it's sort of what hourly pay is - you get it when you work and not when you don't.

Personally I'm not sure it's something that makes sense, it should just be factored in to the wage. Most hourly paid jobs I know of don't have regular hours, even - how much do you pay for a week's holiday when some weeks the employee works 8 hours and some 24 hours? An average? Of what, if they've only been there a few months, say?

Now, time off, e.g. whether someone practically actually can take time off during the year without being sacked, is a different matter entirely.

Historically (before my career as a software developer) whenever I've felt like I need a bit of time out I've either had to negotiate it or just leave. It's usually far easier to quit a job than to convince your manager to let you go away for a few weeks. Sometimes the bureaucracy doesn't even, well, understand it.

I am personally completely convinced that the only answer to these sorts of issues is just to pay people properly. If they choose to chuck the money away regardless, it's on them.

Building some savings early in my adult life and maintaining them has been the best thing I've ever done. It turns the matter of "does this job offer holiday" "can I get the weekend off" stuff into an academic concern because you are in control.

There are a set of Federal Holidays, but the Fair Labor Standards Act does not require that all workers get them off nor that they are paid [1]. There are some holidays that are Federal Holidays but are generally not observed nationwide (e.g., Colombus Day), however, banks and financial institutions including the stock market may be closed for them.

Most workers get about 10 weekdays off per year from these federal holidays (Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, etc.) but at the low end (think fast food worker) that’s often not the case. Particularly part-time workers often get nothing. A comment downthread suggests that 23% of workers get no vacation time, but that might or might not also mean “and no Federal Holidays”.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/holidays

Americans do switch jobs more frequently. People have more occasions to unwind between jobs (perhaps cashing out their unused leaves to pay for a big trip).

Holidays: Federal holidays where people are off and they still get paid as if they were working.

Vacation: Time off work that is paid that is accrued during the time you are working. When you submit your time, you can use your vacation hours.

Sick: Days that you are suppose to either be unable to work or have a dependent (or spouse) that you need to take care of. Depending on the company, they can require doctor’s notes.

Many companies lump sick and vacation as “paid time off”.

Companies usually have paid bereavement leave.

I’ve worked as a contractor occasionally with none of these types of time off, but fortunately, I am in a position to adjust my rate accordingly.

Even when I was in college and working retail we had some type of minimum holiday pay.

Back in highschool, I worked hourly at a library for a year, and don't recall getting any paid vacation time. What I do remember is trading days with co-workers so I could get a full week off on occasion, or once just giving them my days so they got paid more that week with no pay loss another week.

The Internet Archive, on the other hand, is a nonprofit run by known, reputable people.

(Setting aside the ethics of reading journalists' work without compensating them.)

[1] https://archive.org

[2] https://outline.com/privacy.html

BRAD HOOPER quit his previous job at a grocery in Madison because his boss was “a little crazy”. The manager threatened to sack him and other cashiers for refusing orders to work longer than their agreed hours. Not long ago, Mr Hooper’s decision to walk out might have looked foolhardy. A long-haired navy veteran, he suffers from recurrent ill-health, including insomnia. He has no education beyond high school. Early this decade he was jobless for a year and recalls how back then, there were “a thousand people applying for every McDonald’s job”.

This time he struck lucky, finding much better work. Today he sells tobacco and cigarettes in a chain store for 32 hours a week. That leaves plenty of time for his passion, reading science fiction. And after years of low earnings he collects $13.90 an hour, almost double the state’s minimum rate and better than the grocer’s pay. His new employer has already bumped up his wages twice in 18 months. “It’s pretty good,” he says with a grin. What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday. The firm also offers help with health insurance.

His improving fortunes reflect recent gains for many of America’s lowest-paid. Handwritten “help wanted” signs adorn windows of many cafés and shops in Madison. A few steps on from the cigarette shop is the city’s job centre, where a manager with little else to do points to a screen that tallies 98,678 unfilled vacancies across Wisconsin. In five years, he says, he has never seen such demand for labour. He says some employers now recruit from a vocational training centre for the disabled. Others tour prisons, signing up inmates to work immediately on their release.

Unemployment in Wisconsin is below 3%, which is a record. Across America it was last this low, at 3.6%, half a century ago. A tight labour market has been pushing up median pay for some time. Fewer unauthorised immigrants arriving in America may contribute to the squeeze, though this is disputed. Official figures show average hourly earnings rising by 3.2% on an annual basis. “Right now, part time, it seems like everyone is hiring. Every American who wants a job right now can get a job,” says another shop worker in Merrillville, in northern Indiana.

In any economic upturn the last group of workers to prosper are typically the poorest earners, such as low-skilled shopstaff, food preparers, care-givers and temps. Their pay was walloped in the Great Recession a decade ago, and the recovery since has been unusually slow. Pay has leapt recently—with the lowest-paid enjoying faster gains than the better-off.

The benefits are not equally spread. In Wisconsin, as in much of the country, more jobs are being created in urban areas and in services. Laura Dresser, a labour economist, points to a “very big racial inequality among workers”. Wages have been rising fastest for African-Americans, but poorer blacks, especially those with felony convictions, are also likelier to have fallen out of the formal labour market, so are not counted in unemployment figures.

The wage recovery is not only about markets. Policy matters too. Some states, typically Republican-run, have been reluctant to lift minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. In Merrillville, a worker in a petshop carries a Husky puppy to be inspected by a group of teenage girls. Staff are paid “a dollar or two above the minimum wage”, says his manager. Despite his 13 years’ employment, and over 40 hours’ toil each week, his pay and benefits amount to little. He calls occasional bonuses a “carrot at the end of the road”.

He could munch on bigger carrots in other states. Lawmakers in some states are more willing to lift minimum wages. Where they do, the incomes of the lowest-paid rise particularly fast. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia raised the minimum wage last year. (Some cities, like Chicago and New York, occasionally raise it too). Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute told Congress in March that, in states which put up minimum wages at least once in the five years to 2018, incomes for the poorest rose by an average of 13%. In the remaining states, by contrast, the poorest got a rise of 8.6% over the same period.

In neither case, however, do the increases amount to much better long-term prospects for the worst-off. By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%.

One study in Wisconsin suggests that caretakers, for example, took home over $12 an hour by last year, so were only just getting back to their (real) average earnings achieved in 2010. Expansion at the bottom of the labour market “is finally pulling some wages up. But it’s certainly been much slower in this boom than any other,” argues Tim Smeeding, a poverty expert at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. He describes “capital winning over labour” for several decades, and expects the trend to continue, given weak unions, more automation and other trends.

The poorest get some hard-to-measure benefits in addition to higher hourly pay. Mr Hooper is not alone in daring to walk away from an exploitative boss. More of the low-paid get a bit more say on how and when they toil. Many crave a reduction in the income volatility that afflicts them, since sudden swings in earnings are associated with poor mental health, high stress and worry over losing access to financial assistance or food stamps.

One study of 7,000 households, by Pew, found in 2015 that 92% of them would opt for lower average incomes, if earnings were predictable. Follow-up research late last year suggested the same trends are still present. Low- and middle-income households remain anxious about volatile earnings. Most have almost no savings. Many would struggle with a financial shock of just a few hundred dollars.

Lots of jobs that are being created are in or near flourishing cities like Madison, where low-paid workers are squeezed by high housing costs. Pew has estimated that 38% of all tenant households spend at least 30% of their income on rent. Living in more affordable places, such as Janesville, an hour south of Madison, may be an option for the lower-paid. But that means commuting to the city, or taking local jobs with less pay and fewer benefits. Few workers earning less than $12 an hour get health insurance from their employer, whereas most do so above that threshold.

Katherine Cramer, who studies the long-standing causes of simmering anger among poorer, rural Americans, says “resentment is worse than before”, despite the recent better wages. Rural folk complain that “it’s been like this for decades”, she says. A year or two catching up has not yet been enough to change their minds.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Better at the bottom"

It reminds me of the Onion article rejoicing that "Chinese Employers To Grant 15-Minute Maternity Break".

https://www.theonion.com/chinese-employers-to-grant-15-minut...

"Of course, this measure wouldn't need to be taken at all if pregnant workers could schedule their due dates for the annual holiday of May 1," Huang added.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_index

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_regression