{"id":5041,"date":"2021-04-25T21:31:15","date_gmt":"2021-04-25T21:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5041"},"modified":"2021-04-25T21:31:15","modified_gmt":"2021-04-25T21:31:15","slug":"what-the-pandemic-taught-us-about-americas-working-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5041","title":{"rendered":"What the pandemic taught us about America\u2019s working class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;April, who works at a pet shop in Minneapolis, makes $11.75 an hour. She loves her job, and it pays better than the federal minimum wage, but not by much. She and her partner get by. They still don\u2019t make enough money to afford a car, but they can manage rent, their phones, and internet, and support their 12-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her partner lost his job as a body piercer when the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/coronavirus-covid19\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pandemic<\/a>&nbsp;hit. He went on unemployment insurance for a while, and he and April finally found health insurance through a public assistance program. It was more consistent income than they\u2019d seen in quite some time. \u201cWe were able to get a little bit of extra money into our accounts for once. We weren\u2019t going paycheck to paycheck for a while. That was wonderful,\u201d April said. \u201cI think a ton of people were finally out of the poverty level with that money.\u201d Her partner has now found a different job that allows him to work from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Life is more or less fine, but April said it would be better if they made more. \u201cWe would be able to have a house like a normal family,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>April and her family\u2019s situation is quite normal: In 2019,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2021\/03\/03\/15-minimum-wage-black-hispanic-women\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">about 39 million people<\/a>&nbsp;made less than $15 an hour. When the pandemic hit, that number actually fell \u2014 not because people were making more but because low-wage workers became unemployed.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/22332438\/minimum-wage-unemployment-democrats\">https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/22332438\/minimum-wage-unemployment-democrats<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;April, who works at a pet shop in Minneapolis, makes $11.75 an hour. She loves her job, and it pays better than the federal minimum wage, but not by much. She and her partner get by. They still don\u2019t make enough money to afford a car, but they can manage rent, their phones, and internet, and support their 12-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n<p>Her partner lost his job as a body piercer when the pandemic hit. He went on unemployment insurance for a while, and he and April finally found health insurance through a public assistance program. It was more consistent income than they\u2019d seen in quite some time. \u201cWe were able to get a little bit of extra money into our accounts for once. We weren\u2019t going paycheck to paycheck for a while. That was wonderful,\u201d April said. \u201cI think a ton of people were finally out of the poverty level with that money.\u201d Her partner has now found a different job that allows him to work from home.<\/p>\n<p>Life is more or less fine, but April said it would be better if they made more. \u201cWe would be able to have a house like a normal family,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>April and her family\u2019s situation is quite normal: In 2019, about 39 million people made less than $15 an hour. When the pandemic hit, that number actually fell \u2014 not because people were making more but because low-wage workers became unemployed.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[588,409,483,217,165,363,574,1069],"class_list":["post-5041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-corona","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-inequality","tag-workers","tag-working-poor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5042,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5041\/revisions\/5042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}