For many Californians, the phrase “low-wage worker” undoubtedly conjures a couple of very specific images: a kid grinding through a summer job, or a farmworker sweating in the heat of a planting or harvesting season.
To be sure, both groups have been paid low wages for decades — but that’s not close to the state’s actual labor picture. Teenagers comprise only 7.5% of all low-wage workers in California. And agriculture as an industry, lumped together with forestry, fishing and hunting for survey purposes, accounts for less than 4% of the low-wage workforce because of its relatively small number of workers overall.
In fact, research by the UC Berkeley Labor Center reveals an almost entirely different landscape, and it portends a worrisome future. Not only were more than 35% of workers in California (roughly 5.6 million people) paid low wages in 2022, but by the state’s own forecast, the top eight categories of job growth by 2030 are low-wage occupations — tough jobs that don’t pay people enough to live.
“This emphasizes the need to improve the quality of these jobs — not just the wage, but the work itself,” said Enrique Lopezlira, who directs the center’s low-wage work research. “It’s about who holds the power, and in a lot of these labor markets, it’s not the worker.”
The center’s Low-Wage Work in California Data Explorer 2024 draws on statistics extracted from the Current Population Survey, a monthly study of U.S. households conducted jointly by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. Lopezlira said the center felt the need to update numbers that were last examined when the state and the country were still emerging from a pandemic-shaken job market.
Some things haven’t changed much. The majority of low-wage workers are women and people of color, and the three fields with the highest shares of the low-wage workforce are retail, hospitality/food service and health care.
But by diving deep into the numbers, the survey produces some surprises — or at least explodes a few myths:
- Far removed from the likely stereotypes, nearly 60% of low-wage jobs in the state are held by people age 30 or older.
- The percentage of California’s low-wage workers who are 55 or older has more than doubled in the past two decades, now constituting 17% of the low-wage workforce. That’s more than twice the teen count.
- Most low-wage workers are employed full time and year-round, but they report annual median earnings of only $30,000, compared with $55,000 for all full-time workers.
- Almost half have at least started college, and about one in six holds a bachelor’s or advanced college degree.
The labor center defines low-wage work as any job that pays less than two-thirds of the median full-time wage in California. As of 2022, the most recent year for which data was available, that threshold was $19.69 an hour.
That’s noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, as anyone who lives near a population center in California could tell you, $19.69 an hour isn’t going to come close to covering the living expenses of a person who is trying to secure housing in a metro area. (According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in Los Angeles County would need to make at least $26.63 an hour to meet basic needs. For two adults with a child, a worker would need at least $43.61 an hour if they were the sole earner.)
Second, many of the job categories that fall into the low-wage category are critical to California’s future. The labor center’s study, citing state employment projections from 2020 to 2030, noted that the No. 1 job growth industry is home health and personal care, with more than 1.2 million job openings over the decade. On balance, those jobs have paid miserably for years.
“For those who need home care, it’s really expensive to get, and for those working in care, it’s very low wage and they’re struggling to make ends meet,” Lopezlira said. “And we’re getting older as a state. It’s undeniable: We’re all going to be either a caregiver or a care receiver.”
California’s minimum wage, currently $16 an hour, is among the highest in the nation, but it doesn’t even approach the center’s low-wage threshold. Both those in the fast food industry and workers in certain health care settings will receive raises above the threshold under new state laws, though not all health care workers qualify.
One thing the survey cannot and does not try to answer is the why behind the numbers. The rising percentage of age 55-plus workers in low-wage jobs at least suggests that retirement savings for many Californians don’t keep up with the cost of living in the state, and Lopezlira noted that while the pandemic inspired a wave of job-leaving dubbed the Great Resignation, many older people appear to have since reentered the workforce. But much of that is guesswork.
It’s also difficult to discern how much the prevalence of low-wage occupations is due to the reduced influence of unions, both statewide and nationally. Even with notable big wins in 2023, the unionization rate fell overall, and workers who aren’t represented often have little say in whether they get paid enough to afford the Golden State.
“We know that workers organizing improves their power,” Lopezlira said. “Anything that enhances their ability to organize and lower the power imbalance that now exists will ultimately result in better working conditions, including wages.”
Increasingly, that’s a long road. Absent more state intervention, it may well be that only a surge in union activity can get millions of California’s workers to the threshold of a decent life. In the meantime, the job forecast is for more positions that leave workers gasping for air.
