Americans are spending $153 billion a year to subsidize low wage workers

After decades of wage cuts and health benefit rollbacks, more than half of all state and federal spending on public assistance programs goes to working families who need food stamps, Medicaid, or other support to meet basic needs. Let that sink in — American taxpayers are subsidizing people who work — most of them full-time  (in some case more than full-time) because businesses do not pay a living wage.

Workers like Terrence Wise, a 35-year-old father who works part-time at McDonald’s and Burger King in Kansas City, Mo., and his fiancée Myosha Johnson, a home care worker, are among millions of families in the U.S. who work an average of 38 hours per week but still rely on public assistance. Wise is paid $8.50 an hour at his McDonald’s job and $9 an hour at Burger King. Johnson is paid just above $10 an hour, even after a decade in her field. Wise and Johnson together rely on $240 a month in food stamps to feed their three kids, a cost borne by taxpayers.

The problem of low wages and the accompanying public cost extends far beyond the fast-food industry. Forty-eight percent of home care workers rely on public assistance. In child care, it’s 46 percent. Among part-time college faculty—some of the most highly educated workers in the country—it’s 25 percent.

UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, which I chair, has analyzed state spending for Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and federal spending for those programs as well as food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

We found that, on average, 52 percent of state public assistance spending supports working families (defined as working for at least 26 weeks a year and 10 hours a week) – with costs as high as $3.7 billion in California, $3.3 billion in New York, and $2 billion in Texas.

In recent months, the substantial public cost of low wages has prompted elected officials to take action. Legislators in California, Colorado, Maine, Oregon, and Washington are considering increasing the minimum wage to $12 an hour. In Connecticut, a proposal currently moving through the state legislature would fine large companies that pay low wages in an effort to recoup the costs imposed on taxpayers.