National

Living without a living wage

At the ever-growing bottom of the American economy, a low-wage worker becomes a minimum-wage activist

By Eli Saslow
MARCH 8, 2020

DURHAM, N.C. — She had been riding the city bus almost every day for the past decade without paying much attention to the people around her. Sara Fearrington, 43, was usually isolated in the fog of her own problems, commuting between working double shifts at Waffle House and parenting at home, but now she walked with uncertainty into Durham’s bus station late one afternoon holding a clipboard and studying the crowd of tired faces.

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She had been both employed and poor for her entire adulthood, but only in the past few months had she learned that officially made her a part of something: the low-wage workforce, the fastest growing segment of a splintering American economy that continues to expand at both extremes. There were a record 53 million low-wage workers last year, or about 44 percent of all active workers in the United States. More than half were women. Two-thirds were in their prime earning years. Forty percent were supporting children at home. They earned a median annual salary of $17,950.

Sara’s own version of those statistics meant awakening at 4:40 a.m. to catch the first city bus of the day because she didn’t have a car, and asking friends to share medications because she didn’t have health insurance, and working the past 11 years without taking a vacation because she couldn’t afford the time off. But what she resented most about being one of the working poor was the constant anxiety that came from having no margin for error. At every moment, the smallest problem threatened to upend the fragile balance of her life, and now on a day when she had $28.42 in savings and $2.09 in checking, she arrived home from the bus station to find a big problem waiting in an envelope on her porch.

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They’d been together since high school in a middle-class suburb of New Jersey. Sara had gotten pregnant at 17, hid it from her family, and then moved into a one-bedroom apartment with Dee. Their first debt of adulthood was for medical expenses related to the delivery. Their next was for child care so Sara could finish school. Their next was for student loans so Sara could take college classes in computer programming, which went nowhere. Now it was 11 apartments and a combined 28 low-wage jobs later. The blisters on Sara’s feet had hardened into scars and a tattoo on her forearm read, “Broken,” and Dee couldn’t stop apologizing for letting her down. He was trained in construction, welding and landscaping, but lately all he could do was care for the kids and work an occasional odd job in the neighborhood.

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eli.saslow@washpost.com