Problems in Paradise: Low Wages and the Well-Being of Hawaiians

Real Income and Poverty

As noted earlier, the impact of low wages should be balanced against the COL of an area.

In 2019, 29 states and Washington, D.C., had minimum wages above the federal minimum of US$7.25 an hour. State minimum wages ranged from US$5.15 an hour (Georgia and Wyoming) to a high of US$14 per hour in Washington, D.C. By contrast, Hawaii’s US$10.10 minimum wage is US$2.85 higher than the federal minimum. Despite having the highest COL of any state, 10 states have a higher minimum wage than Hawaii (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2019). In short, Hawaii’s minimum wage of US$10.10 an hour is anemic compared with its high COL. It is also almost US$2 an hour lower than California’s US$12 minimum. The issue of poverty and low-wage work is a key public policy challenge and one that is addressed under the rubric of “Reduce Extreme Economic Inequality” as part of the Grand Challenges for Social Work (2019).

Hawaii is the headquarters of the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), which comprises Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force service components, plus the Coast Guard. The U.S. military is Hawaii’s second largest industry, and its economy is heavily dependent on military expenditures that generate almost US$15 billion a year and create more than 102,000 jobs and US$8.7 billion in family incomes (Chamber of Commerce Hawaii, 2019).

Tourism is the largest single contributor to Hawaii’s gross domestic product and accounts for about 21% of its entire economy (Wilson, 2013). Hotel and restaurant jobs represented 60% of Hawaii’s job growth in 2017. In 2019, hotels and restaurants employed about 20% of all workers in Hawaii, double the proportion nationally (Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, 2019; McAvoy & Rugabe, 2018). Nationally, restaurant and hotel workers also earn some of the lowest salaries, which is true for Hawaii’s US$4.6-billion-a-year restaurant sector with its 71,300 jobs.

Low wages in the restaurant sector are exacerbated by Hawaii’s low tip credit. The tip credit is part of federal and state law that tries to legally balance the wage disparity between the “back-of-house” (BOH) kitchen employees and the “front-of-house” (FOH) waitstaff who earn more money through tipping. If a Hawaii restaurant worker regularly makes at least US$20 an hour in tips, the employer can use a tip credit of 75 cents an hour to reduce the US$10.10 minimum wage to US$9.35 an hour. In 2018 Congress lifted the rule against tip pooling so that employers can now require that servers’ tips be shared with cooks and dishwashers (but not managers and supervisors). In effect, employers can pay BOH employees less by reallocating a portion of servers’ tips (Hawaii Business, 2019). Groups like Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) are fighting nationally to eliminate the two-tiered wage system that results in a lower minimum wage and less money for servers. Restaurant workers, especially those in fast food, are some of the most exploited workers in the United States. They are also one of the most notoriously difficult groups to organize. One fertile area for social workers is to work with groups like the ROC and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to organize restaurant and hotel workers.

In 2017, the average yearly wage in Hawaii for covered employees was US$49,671, US$5,719 or 10.3% lower than the U.S. average. However, total household income was US$77,756, US$17,429 or almost 29% higher than the U.S. average. Broken down, it was US$31,826 for high school graduates; US$24,658 for those with less than high school; and US$49,455 for a college graduate. In 2017, the highest paid group of Hawaii workers was White and were paid 1.2 times more than Asian workers (the second highest salary of any race/ethnicity; Data USA, 2019).

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has guidelines for those eligible to receive housing help. This calculation sets lower income limits at 80% and very low-income limits at 50% of the median wage for a county or metro area. U.S. Department of HUD’s (2019) guidelines listed a single person in Honolulu as low income if they earned less than US$65,350 a year (nearly a US$7,000 increase from the 2017 guidelines). A person living in Honolulu earning the Hawaiian average salary of US$40,239 to US$46,760 (state income data varies from the U.S. Census 2019(b) data) is considered very low income, while a family of four earning less than US$60,250 is classified as very low income (U.S. Department of HUD, 2019). A single worker earning the minimum wage in Hawaii earns US$21,008 a year before taxes, putting them at roughly 50% of the average Honolulu wage and at one third of the HUD low-income threshold.

Low- and very-low-income applies not only to the typical working poor but also to public employees, including Hawaii’s teachers. The average 2016 salary for Hawaii public school teachers was US$57,431, putting them at almost US$8,000 below the HUD low-income guidelines. This COL gap is even worse for beginning bachelor’s level teachers (without teacher credentials) who earned US$35,962 a year in 2019. Beginning teachers with a license earned US$47,400. When the COL is factored in, Hawaii teachers are paid dead last among all states (Vorsino, 2018). Moreover, a teacher in Hawaii heading a four-person single family and making the maximum entry salary (6 years of prior teaching) of US$56,258 is classified as very low income. When the COL is factored in, the average salary for all teachers is close to US$30,086 (“Hawaii ‘Worst State’ for Teachers,” 2018). Not surprisingly, about 1,200 teachers in Hawaii resign each year, with 52% listing “leaving Hawaii” as their primary reason (Richards, 2019). The low wage scenario is similar for social workers. A social worker IV (requiring a Bachelor or Master of Social Work [BSW or MSW] degree) working for the State of Hawaii earns from US$51,792 to US$60,636 a year, both of which are below the HUD income guidelines. Nationally, 82% of BSWs earned under US$39,999 and 26% earned less than US$30,000 a year in 2018. Roughly 17% of BSWs earned under US$20,000 a year. The median income of MSWs ranged from US$42,500 to a high of US$47,500 in a large (1 million plus population) city (Salsberg et al., 2019). Based on these incomes, social workers could also help organize other social workers around salaries and workplace issues.

This COL wage gap exists in Hawaii despite the state having one of the lowest levels of top 1% income shares in the nation. In 2012, Hawaii ranked third lowest in the U.S. for income inequality, with the top 1% claiming only 13.36% of the state’s total income (Tani, 2015). Although Hawaii is an outlier in some ways, the gap between wages and real living costs also exists in a wide range of cities and states.

Housing and Low Wages in Hawaii

Inadequate wages and high COL directly impact housing and homelessness. Like most European cities, Hawaii does not have large rental apartment complexes. Instead, rentals involve individual-owned apartments or homes. Also like many high-demand urban areas, Honolulu (Hawaii’s economic engine) faces a severe shortage of affordable housing, leading to high and often unaffordable rents out of proportion to real wages (see Table 1).

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Table 1.

What US$1,500 a Month in Rent Gets You in Hawaii.

• 765 sq. ft. living space

• Median price per sq. ft.: US$1.96

• Dwellings with dishwashers: 23%

• Dwellings with washer/dryers: 66%

• Dwellings with air conditioning: 72%

Source. Keenan (2017).

The Talk Poverty project (2019) ranked Hawaii 48^th nationally for affordable housing (Talk Poverty, 2019). Despite having the highest median home price in the United States (US$617,000 across Hawaii and US$835,000 on Oahu), about 59.5% of Hawaiians owned their home in 2019 compared with the U.S. average of 65% (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2019, 2020; “Median Price of Single-Family,” 2019). The median monthly housing costs for owners with mortgages were US$2,337 in 2017. Across the United States, Hawaii had the third highest median housing costs for owners with mortgages (Hawaii State Data Center, 2018). The relatively high number of Hawaiian homeowners reflects the important role of legacy homes (continuously occupied homes passed down to family members). Other Hawaiians own homes through the Hawaiian Homes Commission, whereby more than 2,000,000 acres of public land can be used as homesteads or farms for native Hawaiians (having at least 50% of Hawaiian blood). Beneficiaries receive a 99-year (renewable up to 199 years) homestead lease at US$1 a year.

Roughly 40% of Hawaiians are renters and the median renter costs for Hawaii was US$1,573 in 2017. In April 2019, the average rental cost for an apartment in Honolulu was US$1,721. One-bedroom apartments in Honolulu rented for US$1,650 a month on average and two bedrooms averaged US$1,747 (Rent Jungle, 2019). By comparison, a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco rented for US$3,600. A worker earning Hawaii’s minimum wage of US$10.10 an hour would make US$1,616 a month before taxes, less than the cost of a small one-bedroom apartment. Someone earning US$42,000 a year or US$3,500 a month (before taxes) would spend roughly half of their pretax income on housing, which is above HUD’s recommendation of 30%.

Why is there homelessness in Hawaii (2019)?

Hawaii has the highest per capita rate of homelessness in the nation. In 2018, there were approximately 6,500 homeless people in Hawaii with most living in Honolulu (a 2019 point-of-time study identified 4,453 homeless people in Honolulu). Of that number, roughly 623 families comprising 1,357 individuals were homeless (Honolulu Mayor’s Office of Housing, 2019). Despite the severity of the problem, the number of homeless families represents a small fraction of the more than 150,000 households in Honolulu.

According to Cathy Bussewitz (2015), service providers maintain that 40% of Hawaii’s homeless work at least part time. Journalist Allyson Blair of Hawaii News Now (“Hawaii ‘Worst State’ for Teachers,” 2018) wrote,

Matthew and his wife know all too well that having a job doesn’t mean being able to cover the bills. For the past two months, the couple and their five children have been living at the IHS family shelter. Matthew . . . who works at Honolulu’s airport . . . said he’s trying to boost the family’s income by getting a night job. His wife is applying for jobs, too.

Hope Services-Hawaii observed that,

On every island in Hawaii families are sleeping in tents on the beaches, tucked away in the lava, and camped in public parks. Parents experiencing homelessness work full time jobs while children do their homework by flashlight—in cars parked in Hawaii’s towns and cities. (Hope Services-Hawaii, 2017)

There is a growing trend among the homeless, many of whom are employed, of living in their vehicles. Since this is not tracked by the point-in-time count of homelessness, no one is certain about the exact number of people living in cars, trucks, or vans, many of which are abandoned. Homeless advocates observe that people who live in their vehicles are on the move, often parking at beach parks, shopping centers, churches, and side streets (Blair, 2018). Many have jobs and use beach park showers or bathrooms in the small number of restaurants that have bathrooms open to the public.

The impact of homelessness on children includes hunger, poor physical and mental health, and interrupted or delayed education. Homeless children are twice as likely to have a learning disability, repeating a grade, or being suspended from school. Half of school age homeless children have depression and anxiety problems. Homelessness is also linked to low birth weight, malnutrition, and a range of physical ailments (American Psychological Association, 2019).

Multigenerational Living

Rates of multigenerational households are higher in areas with many immigrants living with relatives, where there are housing shortages, where a high COL encourages families to double up, or where married and unmarried families live with their parents for support. One way that Hawaiians deal with low wages and a high COL is by multigenerational living. In the United States, 3.7% of families live in multigenerational households compared with 8.2% of Hawaiian families (Stern et al., 2004).

Ohana translates to family (including extended families and nonrelated people) in Hawaiian. In the island’s real estate parlance, it refers to a small apartment attached to the main house or a separate detached house on the property. It differs from a guest house in that related or extended families live there permanently. An Ohana property combined with a legacy home helps locals survive Hawaii’s exorbitant property and rental costs.

Low salaries have led more adult children to live with their parents. A 2016 Pew Research Center study found that 18- to 34-year-olds are now more likely to live with their parents than in any other living arrangement. Fry (2016) points out that “young men’s wages (after adjusting for inflation) have been on a downward trajectory since 1970 . . . As wages have fallen, the share of young men living in the home of their parent(s) has risen.” A Priceonomics study of 60,000 users found that “15% of the adults live with their parents. But that figure is higher in parts of the country with a high COL, underscoring the fact that income is a key determinant of the living situation” (Priceonomics Data Studio, 2016). Not surprisingly, the states with the highest COL relative to salaries (e.g., California, Florida, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Washington, D.C., and Delaware) have some of the highest rates of shared households (Macartney & Mykyta, 2012). The increased trend toward shared households has important implications for financial independence, family formation, and home ownership.

Taking Multiple Jobs to Make Ends Meet

Workers often occupy multiple jobs to compensate for low or inadequate salaries. In 2013, 8.3% of the U.S. workforce had multiple jobs. Forty percent of workers in the lower paid and heavily female sectors (e.g., educational services, health care, and social assistance) had multiple jobs compared with 16.7% of men in that sector (Beckhusen, 2019).

The need for multiple jobs is driven by factors that include the growth of the gig economy, a labor market that relies on short-term contracts, and freelance work instead of permanent jobs with benefits. The growth of the gig economy is made possible by technological developments that allow corporations to outsource the costs of running their business using freelancers who often work from home (20% of companies now refer to employees as freelancers). Freelancers are inexpensive because they pay for their own health insurance, retirement, equipment, and expenses. Employers avoid paying benefits for sick leave, paid holidays, vacation leave, retirement, and health insurance. Some corporations outsource their legal liabilities to freelancers through hold harmless clauses (Reed, 2020).

The gig economy includes Uber and Lyft drivers, Airbnb, food couriers like Bite Squad or Uber Eats, bike couriers, freelance writers and editors, and adjunct college instructors paid by the course. Despite the lure of job flexibility, the financial promise of the gig economy is rarely attained by contract workers. For instance, a 2017 Economic Policy Institute study found that Uber drivers earn US$24.77 in hourly passenger fares. However, after subtracting vehicle expenses, health insurance, and Uber’s commissions and fees, drivers earn only US$9.21 an hour, or the minimum wage in many states (Mishel, 2018). A 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study found that the median income of Uber drivers was US$8.55 an hour, and from 4% to 8% of drivers lose money (Zoepf, 2018).

In The Fissured Workplace, David Weil (2014) documents how large corporations are abdicating their role as direct employers and outsourcing their work to small companies that ruthlessly compete with each other. Weil concludes that while this trend has saved businesses a lot of money and passed savings onto customers, it has also led to declining wages, an erosion of benefits, greater economic insecurity among workers, and widening income inequality as corporations stop sharing their financial success with employees. These trends have forced a growing number of workers to patch together an income framework made up of various sources of employment. Unfortunately, this struggle has been complicated by a collapsing retail sector that provided evening and weekend employment.

Hawaii is in the top third of all states for the number of workers with multiple jobs. In 2015, 5.7% of Hawaiian workers reported working at one or more jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). These numbers may be an underestimate because some people with second or third jobs, especially in certain trade sectors, are paid in cash and do not report that income.

Holding down multiple jobs results in spending less time with family and friends. National Public Radio reporter Ku`uwehi Hiraishi (2018) interviewed several Hawaiians holding down multiple jobs:

After working his 9-to-5 at the . . . Marriott [hotel], . . . Jason Maxwell . . . head(s) to a second job. . . . “I’ll have an hour to go shower and change and start . . . [working] from 6pm to 2am or 3am depending on when I get out.” He’s lucky if he gets a half-day off to spend with his 2-year-old daughter. Maria Teresa Cainguitan was working three jobs to get by. “I work at the Zippy’s [restaurant] graveyard shift. I finish 6’oclock in the morning and then . . . I come to [the] . . . Marriott to work as a housekeeper for eight hours. Then I work at the McDonalds.” Andre Holcom: “I see myself working two jobs until I kick the bucket.” He spends more time working at the Resort than he does with his family of six. “You know it takes a toll on my family life, I mean cause we’re always at work either myself or my wife.”

Despite juggling multiple jobs, the divorce rate in Hawaii is the lowest (depending on the source) or close to the lowest in the nation (McPhillips, 2019).

The stress of low salaries, a high COL, and multiple low-wage jobs can contribute to drug use. Although linking drug use with the stress of multiple jobs and long hours at work has not been conclusively proven, there is a known correlation between workplace stress and addiction (Sinha, 2008). Moreover, both cocaine, and especially methamphetamine (meth), are stimulants with a strong foothold in Hawaii.

Hawaii’s location between Asian meth markets and the U.S. mainland, combined with an overworked and impoverished lower class, provided the perfect environment for a meth epidemic. Hawaii Judge Edward Kubo stated that,

We’re not proud of it. But crystal methamphetamine is our gift to the nation. It started here. At that time meth was called the poor man’s cocaine. It was cheaper and yet you could get the same high. And it exploded here. Meth became the worst thing that we ever saw. (quoted in Narconon, 2019)

Quest Diagnostics, a major drug testing company, released a national study of more than 4.5 million urine samples collected from workplace drug tests done in 2010. The results showed that meth use in the Hawaiian workplace was 410% greater than the national average (Hawaii Island Recovery, 2019). The results of 40,000 urine samples from Hawaiian workers also showed a year-to-year increase in positive tests for cocaine and amphetamines (cocaine use rose 67% while amphetamine use increased by 57%; Mendoza, 2018). For some users, meth is a cheap relief from the exhaustion of multiple jobs and long working hours.

In Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life, Annette Lareau (2011) argues that middle-class parents employ a range of enrichment activities to develop the talents and skills of their children. In turn, these children do better academically. Because overworked working-class and poor families often hold down multiple jobs, they have less time to devote to their child’s academic growth, including helping with homework. Predictably, these children are at a disadvantage when competing with children from middle- or upper-middle class homes. By analyzing differences between these two modes of childrearing, Lareau demonstrates how social class and work shapes the lives of children. The low wage labor market that requires long hours in multiple jobs shapes not only the lives of parents but also the success of their children.

Inadequate Wages, Debt, and the Fringe Economy

Low wages coupled with high COL inevitably leads to a “survival gap” that is met by taking an additional job or by going into debt. In 2017, GOBankingRates surveyed more than 2,000 people in 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine their main financial worry. The most common cause (32%) of financial stress was the everyday costs of living. However, almost 67% of Hawaiians listed their main source of financial stress as debt (Olya, 2018).

Hawaii’s average debt of US$869,250 per person made it the state with the highest per capita debt. In fact, Hawaii’s debt was 3 times higher than Maryland’s second place debt. Much of Hawaii’s debt is related to high housing prices. About 83% of Hawaiian homeowners carried a mortgage and 33% owed between US$300,000 and US$500,000. Seventy-five percent of respondents had credit card debt in 2017, with 17% owing more than US$10,000 on their cards (Keenan, 2019).

Although Hawaii had the fourth highest median household income (the median income per paycheck was US$2,768.35) in 2018, the COL left that income at a negative −US$738.04 (Huddleston, 2019). According to journalist Cameron Huddleston (2019), Hawaii is the only state where residents have a deficit after covering their living expenses. Hawaii had the sixth largest credit card debt (US$6,981) in 2017; paradoxically, it also ranked in the top 10 states for high credit scores (Sullivan, 2018).

Low wages relative to COL and high debt levels, can drive people with low credit scores into a fringe or shadow economy. The fringe economy is composed of businesses that engage in financially predatory relationships with credit-challenged customers by charging excessive interest rates and fees, or exorbitant prices for goods or services. Fringe economy businesses include payday lenders, pawnshops, check-cashers, rent-to-own stores, “buy-here/pay-here” used car lots, credit card companies that charge excessive penalties for late payment or over-the-credit limits, cell phone providers that coerce low income customers into expensive prepaid plans with overpriced cell phones, subprime lenders that gouge prospective homeowners and car buyers, and predatory debit card companies. One common financial trap for low-wage workers is payday lending. Payday loans are from 14 to 30 days or more. A customer borrows US$500 for 2 weeks and repays anywhere from US$587.50 to US$600, which translates into an annual percentage rate of between 450% and 460% or more (Karger, 2005). To sanitize “payday lending,” one company calls it Micro-Credit Advances (PayDayHawaii, 2010). Low wages relative to the COL, high rents, and a reliance on gig employment ensures a growing customer base for fringe economy businesses. Taken together, predatory financial and other fringe economy services represent a poverty tax for those that can least afford it.

Conclusion: Implications for Policy and Practice

Social workers can work to address the problem of low wages on two broad fronts: policy practice (including political social work) and micro-level practice. A policy practice perspective would seek to attenuate the problem of inadequate wages by addressing its root cause and working toward legislative and policy changes. For instance, one change might entail lobbying for a real living wage (the minimum salary full-time workers need to support themselves and their families) rather than relying on a flawed minimum wage structure.

MIT developed a living wage calculator to determine the real wage needed to survive in different states and cities (MIT, 2019). For Oahu, the hourly living wage for a single worker was US$16.46; US$28.60 for an adult with one child; and US$31.36 for an adult with two children (MIT, 2019). These numbers are higher than the typical wages in Oahu, and even if the Hawaii legislature passes the proposed US$15 minimum wage, it would still fall short of a living wage.

Improving the financial condition of low wage workers requires more than an appeal to social justice and society’s conscience. Wage structure that brings a worker below the real COL of a city or state is bad economics because it furthers income inequality which weakens the economy. In short, workers have to consume as well as produce because production without consumption leads to a recession or worse. Robert Reich (2011) points out how income inequality harms the economy:

The 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases . . . That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal. When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which . . . ends badly.

In addition to decreased consumption, low wages result in higher costs for taxpayers because low paid work typically comes with little or no benefits, and to compensate, government funds programs targeted for health care, housing, energy assistance, and food. In the end, taxpayers are stuck with paying the bill for low wages, which inevitably costs more than adopting a living wage. To effectively make this and other fiscal arguments requires a knowledge of micro, macro, and welfare economics, subjects rarely taught in U.S. schools of social work. If social workers are to engage in political social work and policy practice, the curriculum needs to include economics and other relevant disciplines. Knowledge of public policy is another requisite area to effect social and economic change. In addition, social workers should possess legislative and lobbying skills, the ability to write and interpret legislation, and a knowledge of political philosophy and social rights. Environmental scanning and budgeting skills are also useful in efforts to influence policy.

Political social work focuses on the dynamics of power in policymaking and the legislative process. The goal is to effect progressive social change by influencing politicians, by helping to shape legislative agendas and priorities, by working on political campaigns, and by bringing issues to the general public and the social work profession (Haynes & Mickelson, 2009; Pritzker & Lane, 2013). An emphasis on political social work should also be part of training students to effect changes in wage and labor policy, two areas currently under assault by conservative state and federal politicians.

James Baldwin (1960) wrote that “anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor” (p. 10). Yet, despite working with low income clients (often highly indebted), social work students generally receive little or no training in financial literacy. Nor does the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) require financial literacy content despite the widespread exploitation of low-wage workers by fringe economy businesses.

The University of Maryland is one of the few social work programs where students can focus on financial issues. Their Financial Social Work Certificate Program is designed to provide

financial social work (FSW) training and skill-building strategies to enable [social workers] to intervene appropriately and effectively with financially distressed individuals, families, and communities. Beyond providing resources, however, social workers must have sophisticated knowledge about issues in typical daily financial life, such as credit, debt, budgeting, and working towards identified financial goals. (University of Maryland School of Social Work, n.d.)

Financial literacy content can include understanding how fringe economy businesses operate, including their business model; knowledge of local and national nonpredatory financial services; understanding credit and the credit industry; and knowledge of state and national regulations governing high-cost financial services. The challenge is to integrate financial literacy training with traditional social work skills.

Social work is facing a new challenge from neoliberal economics, the devaluation of the public sector (i.e., stagnant public sector wages in many places), rising income inequality, the high cost of education, and high rental and housing costs. Both individually and in combination, these factors have created a middle class that is spiraling downward into a new class of the “near poor.” This class of “near poor” differs from low-wage workers employed in fields like fast food, retail sales, house- and office-cleaning, back-of-the-house restaurant work, lawn work, and so forth who have been a traditional focus of social work intervention.

The formerly middle-class “near poor” includes some teachers, some social workers, some high-tech freelancers, college teachers trying to survive on an adjunct wage, college graduates struggling to pay student loans on a Starbuck’s salary, laid-off elderly workers unable to find new jobs, former manufacturing workers now in the low-wage secondary labor market, and those who work in courier, restaurant delivery, and driver jobs. This group of the “near poor” is relatively poor but not abjectly poor. While they earn a living—sometimes higher than the nation’s median wage—they are in debt to pay for their everyday expenses like rent.

Without abandoning traditional groups in poverty, social work can broaden its focus to incorporate this new class of the “near poor.” This may require social workers to develop new strategies and skill sets for working with this group of “near poor.” For instance, this skill set will require an understanding of how the changing economy works and how it impoverishes some people. Many social work clients are victims of the “new economy.”

Early social work movements were concerned with the poor and working classes (Zimbalist, 1977). Consequently, infusing political social work and financial literacy content into social work is to revert back to the halcyon days when social workers and social reformers understood and worked toward improving the economic well-being of the poor.

Social workers are in a unique position to play a role in remedying the problem of low wages because they often have a birds-eye view of the problem. In particular, social work’s emphasis on person-in-environment allows the profession to have both a macro and micro view of low wages. As such, the profession can examine the interplay of structural and interpersonal forces that shape low wages, including individual deficits that can lead to remaining in low wage work. Understanding the interaction between structural and interpersonal forces can shed light on questions about who will be in low wage work, for how long, and what services will they need to move to better employment.